The Gap Between
by McStories
Summary: Pavel Chekov is just the weird kid who helps steer the ship, and Len McCoy's happy to leave it like that. When a late-night visit to sickbay forces him to see Chekov as more, it sets McCoy on a path he never would have anticipated.
1. Chapter 1

_Notes/Warnings: The title comes from a quote from a Russian poet, Yevtushenko, whose works get forced on McCoy in this story: 'Be equal to your talent, not your age. At times let the gap between them be embarrassing.'_

_Herein you will find no dialogue in dialect, nor will Chekov speak in mangled 'Please to be sorry, English is second language, I do best I can' speech. He doesn't talk a lot in the movie, but when he does it's proper English._

_Warnings for slash, some mention of non-con situations (all off-screen). I make no money from this, I own nothing, etc. Other pairings that pop up here include: McCoy/OC (briefly), Spock/Uhura, Kirk/everyone with a pulse._

* * *

Len McCoy never claimed to be particularly worldly. He knew medicine, he knew Georgia, he knew the Enterprise. Despite what he was sometimes accused of he wasn't xenophobic: there was just a hell of a lot he didn't understand and didn't try to understand.

He accepted that most of the cultures and aliens and what-all the ship ran into were gonna be strange. The backwards societies, the zealots from different worlds, the cultures, the histories. It wasn't his job to understand them. He was a doctor, he wasn't a diplomat. He didn't have to understand to heal.

Of course, when he got down to it he didn't understand a lot of things about earth itself. Georgia, sure. Macon, absolutely. The south...mostly. America, a lot. Outside of that, his knowledge and his desire for knowledge were infinitely lessened.

Hell, he didn't understand Spock, and that pointy-eared bastard was one of his closest friends. He didn't understand an entire race subverting all traces of emotion in the interest of raising their eyebrows and lecturing about logic and being all around annoying as hell. But he didn't have to know why Vulcans developed how they did. Spock was his friend either way.

Jim Kirk had been McCoy's closest pal at Starfleet, and was a good friend even now that the cocky young shit was also McCoy's boss. McCoy understood Kirk, even the things he didn't agree with at all. The guy was Midwest through and through, with his bar fights and hellraising and the way he didn't care what the odds were, he just _did_ whatever it was that needed doing. He was an idiot, sure, and a reckless cocky shit who was lucky to have any friends at all and luckier not to be rotting from a thousand alien STDs, but he was a hell of a lot of fun. He was a drinker and a carouser, and McCoy liked that.

Hikaru Sulu, with his easy smiles and he casual way he always seemed to belong exactly where he was...he was California all the way. There was a center of calm about him, something McCoy admired because he didn't have it himself. Mellow, relaxed, interested in trying everything once. He had a thousand hobbies and a million weird talents, from fencing to botany to Andorian Yoga.

Nyota Uhura, she was a lady. A real lady, urban and urbane, New York City. Classy down to her toenails, with a hundred languages and a thousand cultures underneath her skin. McCoy understood her, and appreciated the things about her, and Sulu, and Scott, that he didn't have himself. He liked the hell out of them, and he knew what made them tick.

Then again, he didn't understand little Pavel Chekov in the slightest.

McCoy knew the kid was some kind of genius. He had to be – Starfleet at fourteen, an ensign on the flagship of the Federation three years later. Chekov was younger now than anyone on the ship had been when they went into the academy. He was smart enough to hold his own in long, brow-furrowed talks with Spock, and personable enough to keep up with Sulu and Uhura after they adopted him as their third amigo.

He gave Chekov credit, but he didn't give him a lot of thought. Chekov, along with being one of a million distant things that he didn't really _get_, wasn't the kind of guy McCoy'd ever bother with. Jim was McCoy's kind of guy. Sulu, and Scotty.

Hell, he only liked Spock as much as he did because behind that cool expression and raised eyebrow was a hell of a sharp-tongued bitch. McCoy got a kick out of Spock.

Chekov? Well, McCoy patched Chekov's bruises and scrapes, Chekov steered the tin can McCoy lived in without running them broadside into any planets, and everybody was happy. He was content not to understand the kid, like a million other strange things. He didn't _not_ like him, he was just happy to keep him on the peripherals.

He liked medicine. He liked sutures and medkits and antidotes. He liked grits and bourbon and earth. He liked being the sawbones, saving lives, and being the only voice of reason on the entire damned ship more often than not.

He didn't like constantly thinking about everything in the universe that he didn't understand.

* * *

So when something happened that did make him pay attention to Chekov, it was disconcerting. Even from the start McCoy was off his game.

He was in sickbay late one night, minding his own damned business, finishing up a report on the side effects of this nice and nasty virus an away team had brought on board with them a few weeks back. The virus was gone, of course, McCoy'd be old and infirm before it took him more than a few weeks to find a cure for some alien virus.

He was just wrapping up his report, already hours later than his shift called for, when there was a disturbance from the front of the bay. Unsteady thumps of heavy footsteps, and a voice calling for a nurse.

McCoy was out of his office in a flash: he was a bitter boozing earthhound, yeah, but his sense of duty was just as strong as any officer on that ship.

Coming through the door was Russia's best and brightest, blood staining a line down his chin as he lurched into the bay. The kid was supporting another ensign, a guy that had to have at least a foot and a good sixty pounds on the kid.

The ensign wasn't part of Jim's hand-picked main bridge crew, so McCoy didn't know him all that well. Bauer, he thought the guy's name was. Hans Bauer, maybe. Or Fritz, or some damned thing. Something Aryan that fit his blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Another navigator. Or pilot. He'd been on the bridge once or twice, but McCoy couldn't remember if it was in Chekov's or Sulu's seat.

And speaking of Sulu, the pilot was on Bauer's other side, helping Chekov drag him into the sickbay. Sulu wasn't a heavyweight himself, and the sight of the bulky blond being supported between the two smaller figures brought a quick smirk to McCoy's face.

He gave the threesome a once-over – Bauer white with pain and unable to stay on his feet without help, Chekov with blood on his mouth, Sulu looking unhurt but grim – and grabbed a tricorder from a supply shelf as he approached.

He waved off the approaching night nurse, Latune, amused enough by the sight of the trio to feel magnanimous.

"It's kind of late for a brawl, isn't it?" He kept his words light but his eyes were sharp on the three men. "What happened?"

They lurched awkwardly up to him, and McCoy nodded at the cot nearest where he stood.

To his amusement Chekov all but pushed Bauer away, ducking under the arm Bauer had slung around his neck and simply letting him go. It was a stumbling kind of dance for poor Sulu, crumpling under the larger form's weight but strong enough to get him to the cot before he let him go.

Bauer hit the cot with an oomph of breath and immediately curled up, going fetal as he whimpered in pain.

McCoy approached the bed, looking at Chekov and Sulu more sharply. He didn't fail to notice that no one had answered his question.

"Well?"

Sulu's gaze went to Chekov. He stayed pointedly silent.

Chekov stood where he was, his hands fisted at his sides as he stared at the blond on the bed. "There was a disagreement," he said finally, accent even thicker than normal.

"Uh huh." McCoy waited for him to go on, hesitating between Chekov's bloody face and the pained whimpers from the bed. "Over what?" He quickly decided the prone figure was his first concern, despite knowing that Jim would bitch him out later for letting one of his main bridge crew bleed for a second longer than he had to.

"You didn't insult vodka or something, did you, ace?" He nudged Bauer onto his back, looking him over for signs of injuries. The tricorder would've been faster with a diagnosis, but McCoy hated the idea of consulting a machine before his own senses.

The silence was pretty damn loud behind him, and McCoy sighed and looked back. "Anytime, boys."

"I can't answer, doc. I wasn't there." Sulu's low voice was dark.

Dark enough to draw McCoy's focus. He looked from the helmsman to the navigator. Grim worry in Sulu's eyes, and Chekov avoiding that look.

Bauer moaned behind him.

McCoy ignored him, flipping the diagnostic bed's sensors into life. The guy wasn't dying, and there were interesting things happening there.

He let the bed run its scan, his full attention going to Chekov. "Okay, kid. Talk."

Chekov's throat worked, but he stood as straight and stolid as any Vulcan. "There is nothing to talk about. We had a disagreement."

McCoy rolled his eyes, but approached Chekov with the tricorder. "What did you do, kick him in the balls? Dirty way to fight, kid."

"But it is a way to fight." Chekov's shoulders were back, almost at attention. His steady gaze landed on McCoy. As wide and green and young as they were, the look behind those eyes was fierce. "I'm young, and smaller than some, but I do fight back."

McCoy understood then.

Hell, he should have expected it. Bullies were everywhere, even on the top crew of the top ship in Starfleet. It was inevitable – wherever there was strength there was domination. The weak were preyed on in some form in every society on every damned planet McCoy'd ever read about.

Humans were some of the worst for domineering assholes, and someone young and innocent and brilliant like Chekov would draw them like flies.

Almost amused, McCoy raised the tricorder to scan the kid.

"I am not here as a patient, doctor," Chekov said, stiff. "It is not my blood." He rubbed at his chin with the back of a pale hand, and sure enough the blood swiped off without any trace of a wound underneath.

But his hand was shaking, and McCoy wasn't an idiot. He swept the tricorder over Chekov anyway.

"Look, kid, you brought him in for medical attention. That means he goes on a report, and if you think Kirk's not going to read that report and want to know a few details, you're wrong."

Chekov's eyes went behind McCoy, to the bed. He drew in a shaking breath and wiped his hand on his uniform pants to rub the traces of blood away. He didn't speak.

McCoy glanced over at Sulu, shared a brief moment of empathy. Sulu was a pretty mellow guy, in McCoy's experience, but he was loyal. He was fierce with it, as bad as Jim Kirk himself. The frustration in his dark eyes was acute.

"Look, Chekov." McCoy regarded the boy again once the tricorder readings confirmed that he wasn't hurt. Too-fast heart rate, some stress, not much else. "I hate to say it, but this kind of thing happens. Must've happened to you before now, right? It'll probably happen again. It stinks, but you keep on fighting back and you got nothing to be embarrassed about."

Something flickered in Chekov's face. Surprise, maybe, followed by...something. Something dark. A quick but disturbingly _intense_ moment of despair.

Like the light in his eyes sputtered and went out entirely, if only for a few moments.

But it came and went in a blink, and Chekov straightened his already stuff spine. "He is your patient, doctor. Get your report from him." He didn't wait for an argument, just turned and made for the door.

Sulu swore under his breath and headed after the kid

"Hey." McCoy frowned, sensing in that moment of despair on Chekov's face that he was missing some part of this puzzle. "What the hell's going on, Sulu?"

Sulu slowed but didn't stop. "You know as much as I do, doc. He called my quarters for help getting this asshole to sickbay. He won't say anything else." He was at the door by the end of his words, and he kept moving through and out without letting McCoy ask him anything else.

"Huh." McCoy frowned after them for a moment before he turned back to his remaining patient.

Bauer curled there, breathing too hard, and Jesus. If Chekov really had kicked him in the crotch it must've been a good shot to keep him down so long.

McCoy was almost amused by the thought as he approached the bed to check out the readings. Chekov was right – fighting dirty was still fighting, and maybe word would spread that the infant of the Enterprise was a scrapper. Maybe it'd keep any other would-be attackers off the kid.

God, Kirk would kick this guy's ass for playing schoolyard bully on his ship. For all his grinning irreverence Jim was a mother bear about his crew, the main A shift crew more than the rest. If Bauer had gone after Chekov hard enough that Chekov had to physically fight him off, then Bauer was screwed.

"Made the wrong move here, pal," he informed his patient.

Bauer groaned.

"If you're lucky you'll just be demot..." He trailed off as he called up the full display on the bed's diagnostic console.

The readings flashed up, clear and clinical. Damage was assessed, and the burly ensign's injuries were painted in crisp medical language.

McCoy's smile faded.

For a moment he was confused. Then he remembered Chekov wiping that dried red trail off his chin and saying it wasn't his blood.

His eyes shot from the display to the pale face of Ensign Bauer, and everything casual and amused inside of his mind dried up and blew away like tumbleweeds.

Anger sizzled up inside him in its place.

His hand shot out, pounding into the communicator on the console. "McCoy to Security."

* * *

Jim Kirk was too young and too new a captain to come through the door with any kind of real gravity. He wasn't outright grinning, no, but he strolled in and surveyed sickbay like his presence there was what set them all into motion.

"Bones, what the hell's going on in here?"

McCoy stood where he was, where he'd been standing since he made the call to security. His arms stayed folded over his chest, and he didn't turn his eyes from the now-quiet ensign on the cot.

"Don't know why they called you," he groused, flashing a brief glare at the two waiting security officers. "This bastard belongs in a brig, and I sure as hell don't need a second opinion to confirm it."

Kirk hesitated, surprise stirring under the normal confident swagger. He was a young captain, but he was a damn good captain, and it only took those words from McCoy to get him serious.

"I'm listening."

McCoy nodded at Bauer. "Chekov brought him in. Wouldn't say what happened. Had this guy's blood on his _mouth_." He couldn't stop his words from going sharp.

Bauer had stopped moaning a few minutes ago, but he wasn't any happier than he had been when he was dragged in. For good reason – his career was over, whatever McCoy had to do to see to it. Pale blue eyes looked away from the doctor and captain, and Bauer slumped there in sullen silence.

Jim waited, picking up more tension in his shoulders with every passing second. "Do I have to beg for the rest?"

McCoy reached over and flipped the diagnostic panel to life. The charts came up. Normally he'd small-word any medical language for Jim, but this wasn't a complicated diagnosis.

Trauma to the guy's dick in the form of a small series of lacerations. Two sets. It was the image of the lacerations that brought it all home: the unmistakable pattern of bite marks.

Chekov hadn't kicked the guy in the dick, he'd bitten down. Hard enough to lacerate, hard enough that the guy's blood ended up running down his face.

He gave Kirk a few seconds to look over the image, the blunt diagnosis. "Chekov said just because he was small didn't mean he couldn't fight back."

Kirk's eyes shot up as the clues clicked together and told the story.

His gaze swiveled to McCoy, and then to the man in the bed. "Ensign Bauer." When the ensign didn't instantly respond, Kirk stepped up to the bed. "_Bauer!_"

McCoy felt a moment's grim satisfaction at the snap of authority in his younger friend's voice.

Bauer responded to it, stiffening and looking at Kirk. "Sir."

"You have one minute to explain yourself."

Bauer flinched. He pushed himself to sit up. "Sir, this isn't...it's not what you think."

"Then tell me what it is." Jim spoke through a clenched jaw.

"It was...he kept...Pavel's been hanging around, Captain. We've been talking. This wasn't..." Bauer looked past Kirk at McCoy, resentment flashing over his face. "It's nothing the kid didn't want."

"Brig," Jim answered instantly. When no one reacted to him fast enough, his eyes shot over to the waiting security officers. "I said brig! Now!"

They snapped to attention. Both men moved to the cot.

"And you," Kirk said to Bauer grimly, "had better think long and hard and come up with a better story than that if you ever want to get out again."

McCoy stayed silent, watching as the guards picked up on Jim's tone and hauled Bauer none-too-gently off the cot and to the door.

When they were out the door McCoy let go of his tension. He looked back at the diagnostic display with a sudden tiredness that reminded him of how late it was and how long he'd been in the damn sickbay.

"Son of a _bitch_."

He looked over, catching Jim's eyes. "Yeah. Sums it up."

"Where's Chekov?"

McCoy shrugged. "He took off before I figured out what happened."

Jim drew in a deep breath, and for a moment he looked like a shell-shocked kid. Same look he always got when he was handed some captain duty that he never anticipated having to do.

McCoy regarded him, but didn't say anything. He felt bad for Jim sometimes. He was young. He didn't have the kind of experience a man should have before becoming responsible for hundreds of lives. But Jim didn't want sympathy. He'd asked for it, he'd be the first to point out. He practically demanded his position, bullied his way into it. If he didn't know how to handle some aspects of it...well, he'd learn as he went.

He wasn't scared to tackle any problem, however unfamiliar. That was no doubt one of the top reasons why he happened to be Stafleet's best captain.

"Shit. Okay." Jim scowled suddenly, straightening and pushing his shoulders back. "I'll track him down and get him in here. I want you to give him a look-over, even if..." He glanced at the bed's display and managed a faint smirk. "Even if he seems to have won the round."

McCoy nodded. Chekov wasn't hurt, not physically, and McCoy was no psychiatrist if he was hurt in other ways. But McCoy was what these kids had for a healer, and he wasn't scared to tackle a new ailment.

Something he and Jim had in common.

"Kind of funny, isn't it?"

Since McCoy couldn't see much humor in the situation, he just raised his eyebrows and waited.

Jim flashed him a grim look. "We're so damned advanced in our pretty little starships, building federations with distant worlds...but we're still fucking cavemen."

McCoy gave a twist of a smirk in reply. "Some of us. Evolution's a fickle little bitch."

Jim's smile went the slightest bit sincere, but he turned and strode out the door without answering.

McCoy sighed as the door slid shut behind Jim. He rubbed the tiredness off his face, turning back to the bed Bauer had taken up. He smirked at the display.

Evolution may have been a bitch, but karma was a bigger one.

The smirk faded as he remembered Chekov wiping that drying blood off his chin with a shaking hand.

He reached out and flipped off the display, turning to head back to his office to pack up for the night. He'd worked so damned late he wasn't going to get much more than a nap before his morning shift was scheduled to start again.

He left word with the nurse who'd hold the place together while he slept to give him a call if Jim or Chekov showed up, and left sickbay behind for the too-bright corridors beyond.


	2. Chapter 2

Going into Starfleet felt like dying. He never told anyone that – melodramatic bullshit, even if it was the truth. But it felt like the end of his life.

Len McCoy, PhD, all on his own. Not a husband anymore, not a father in anything more than the literal sense since Joanne had taken her mom's side in the war. A few friends left who hadn't defected, but not enough.

Macon wasn't exactly a one-stoplight town, but it was small. A private practice there wasn't anything to brag about, and Len McCoy was a damn good doctor. Too good for the little general practitioner shingle over his door. Too good for the small-time ailments of small-town people.

But Macon was his home, and he loved it. He never thought seriously about leaving.

The divorce killed that. The divorce was ugly and drawn-out enough that McCoy was left with a tarnished reputation and a rapidly-shrinking patient load. By the end his practice was failing, he couldn't made it work, and he'd forgotten why he even wanted to.

Being driven away from his own home by a vindictive ex and the maliciousness of small town gossip...it pissed him off beyond measure. More than almost anything else about the divorce, that made him a bitter old man before his time.

Like dying, signing up for Starfleet. On his own, driven away from home, driven off his goddamned planet. Alone.

Then came Jim Kirk: cocky and grinning and didn't take shit from anyone, no matter how outmatched he was. Jim had a lousy reputation with his professors. He cheated, he mocked, he wrote papers tearing apart long-held tactical defense maneuvers like tissue paper. He spit in the face of tradition with such complete irreverence that it pissed off everyone in the damned galaxy.

But he didn't care. Jim knew his papers were sound, his strategies were better, and that would get him a passing grade and a place on a ship. The professors couldn't take that away just because they didn't like him.

Jim Kirk wouldn't have left his home because of some ridiculous gossip after a divorce. McCoy hated that about him, and loved it, and for all the friends McCoy made in the academy he always knew Jim was the one that would stick.

So. First was McCoy, all on his own. Then it was Kirk and McCoy.

Then the Enterprise, the whirlwind of their first mission. Enter Spock, the stoic and infuriating bastard.

Something about the defeat of Nero had made Spock and Kirk weirdly close. Jim, who never cared what anyone else thought, suddenly asked Spock's advice and considered his opinions as if they'd been friends for years. And Spock respected Jim, in a strange way. He obviously didn't have much regard for the intuitive and spontaneous way Jim made pretty much all his decisions. But he did seem to understand that Jim's way worked, and worked well. He argued with Jim, but only until a decision was made, and then he supported his captain no matter how little he agreed with his choices.

It might've pissed McCoy off, the two of them getting along so well: McCoy didn't make friends easily, and he sure as hell didn't want to lose Jim to that condescending jerk.

But it didn't piss McCoy off, because he didn't lose Jim.

As much as Spock and Jim had their thing, their connection, McCoy and Spock had the same damned thing. They waged the same kind of wars. Spock hadn't learned to respect McCoy's opinions the same way he respected Jim's, and McCoy thought Spock's logic schtick was a joke, so when they argued it could spark real heat and draw real blood.

But Jim couldn't catch Spock off guard the way McCoy could. Jim didn't win arguments with Spock, because he didn't have to – the final call was his and he knew it. McCoy? He won arguments. Not most of them – not even a lot of them. But he did win. He forced concessions out of Spock time and again, and every time it happened Spock seemed shocked by it.

Spock argued the logical side of things, rationality and precedence. Kirk argued strategy, defense, winning. McCoy argued right. Compassion and morality. All three sides needed each other. All three arguments had to be made.

So.

First there was Len, then Len and Jim. Now there were the three of them. Kirk, McCoy, Spock.

They served together, ate together, drank and talked and played infuriatingly drawn-out chess games and traded books and debated philosophies, and...

It was nice. McCoy'd never had friends like them on earth. Even when he loved his wife, before he hated his wife, they'd never been friends that way. Hell, it was more than Jim and Spock. The longer they were on that ship, serving with the same loyal, brilliant crew, even their crowd of three just seemed like part of a larger group.

Scott? He was a riot. He and McCoy'd had long nights emptying bottles, fighting amiably about Scotch whiskey and southern bourbon. McCoy knew Sulu's hobbies, knew how obsessed Nyota Uhura was about culture and language – even outside of the requirements of her job, she was the most aggressively open-minded person McCoy had ever met.

So it wasn't McCoy, Jim, and Spock, really. It was the crew of the whole damned Enterprise. McCoy had come a long way in five years. A long way from Macon and divorce courts and loneliness and anger. He was part of something now, part of something pretty damned special.

He didn't know most of the crew by name yet. There were people on the ship he'd never even met. He never figured he'd like them all. Even a crew like the Enterprise would have its share of bastards.

McCoy was no idealist, but despite his grumbling and grousing he wasn't a cynic, either. So finding out he was right, that this ship and crew he was proud to be part of was tainted by lesser men who could do evil things to innocents...

It threw him.

The night Bauer was dumped on him he went to his quarters angry about an attack on a strange, brilliant kid. As he lay there waiting for sleep that didn't come, the anger became a kind of sadness.

He was _sad. _For Jim, who would be so damned hurt that his crew wasn't as faultless as he wanted them to be. For the ship baby, Chekov, who had been betrayed by someone who wore their uniform. For Sulu and Uhura and Spock and Chris Chapel and for himself, for everyone on that crew who really was as faultless as Jim wanted.

They didn't deserve to be stained by things like this. None of them did.

* * *

"Doctor."

McCoy looked up from a data padd, squinting in annoyance before he remembered he'd practically demanded this guest show up.

Pavel Chekov stood in the doorway at attention – full uniform, chin squared, eyes straight ahead. All he was missing was a stern salute and a 'reporting for duty, sir'.

McCoy sat back, tossing the padd onto his desk. "Come on in, kid."

Chekov's eyes narrowed, but he did as he was told. He stepped in far enough that the door behind him swished shut, and there he stood.

"Jesus, relax, Chekov. Sit down, this isn't some official thing."

Chekov didn't sit, but his posture eased. He let his gaze focus on McCoy. "Then what is it?" he asked, that accented tenor voice soft, but firm. "I wasn't injured last night. I told Sulu, I told the Captain when he ordered me here..." He frowned suddenly. "I am in trouble."

"What? No. Would you sit down, for God's sake?" McCoy really wasn't much good at the psychology angle of medicine. "You're not in trouble."

Chekov hesitated. "I should be on the bridge right now, but I'm here. If it's not official and I'm not in trouble..."

McCoy pointed at the chair.

Chekov's jaw set, but he moved around the chair and sat down stiffly.

"Thank you," McCoy said, wry. But then he was stuck.

He studied Chekov, the stubborn, annoyed look in those too-young eyes. There was nothing there that indicated any kind of trauma, but even as McCoy looked at him he remembered him the night before.

He saw a moment, brief and then gone, when those eyes had filled with despair.

"Did the captain tell you about Bauer?"

Chekov nodded. "He is in the brig."

"Yeah. Not likely to get out, either. Kirk'll arrange for him to get picked up next time there's a ship in range that's headed back to Earth."

"The captain said..." Chekov hesitated, and the mask of annoyance he wore cracked a bit. "I don't understand, doctor."

"Don't understand what? Trust me, if the captain thought he could get away with it he'd've ejected the bastard from the ship without an EV suit."

"That's what I don't..." The kid frowned, regarding McCoy. "Last night...you said that things like this happen. That it will happen again. You didn't seem to think it was so serious. So why is he in the brig, and why am I here?"

"_I _said..." McCoy gaped at the kid in surprise – there was no way in hell he'd say anything like that. He would never even _think_...

But. No.

He did.

He did say that, when he thought Bauer was nothing worse than a bully. Boneheaded idiot that he was - what kind of doctor diagnosed a disease without all the facts?

"Jesus, kid..." He shook his head, pushing away his irritation at himself before it could get in the way here. "You didn't think I meant...I didn't know what..."

Okay, Len, you've got a damned PhD, form a complete sentence.

"I figured the guy just went after you. Jumped you for your lunch money, or whatever the hell bullies use as an excuse when they're older then ten. I thought he cornered you or something, and you walloped him one to get out of there."

Chekov sat back, a couple of different emotions passing behind his eyes. He looked away from McCoy, eyes on his hands as they curled on his lap.

He looked so fucking young sitting there slumped now that he wasn't pulling the angry officer act anymore. He looked like a kid who needed help. And McCoy was the only help these kids had.

McCoy spoke more gently in the silence. "Why don't you tell me what did happen, Pavel."

"You seem to have figured everything out already," came the quiet reply.

"I'm a doctor, kid, I'm not a mind-reader." He frowned. "I can diagnose that Bauer's pain was caused from injuries to his groin, and I can see that those injuries are shaped a hell of a lot like bite marks. But I'm missing the whole set-up. There's a lot I can assume - and I have, believe me - but I'd rather hear the facts from you."

Chekov was pale by the time McCoy was done. His face was bowed, his eyes hidden. The hands on his lap were curled into limp fists. "The captain knows all this?"

"Me and Jim go back a few years, but even I can't get him to throw an officer in the brig without offering some reason."

"And Hikaru?"

"No."

Chekov looked up at that, eyes wide and green and clouded.

"Just the captain," McCoy confirmed. "And only because I had to, kid. Sulu doesn't know."

Chekov swallowed, but his heaviness didn't ease. McCoy resisted his normal urge to demand information, figuring it was probably the more sensitive thing to actually give the kid time to think through everything.

"You were right," Chekov said finally, drawing in a deep breath and looking straight at McCoy. "Last night."

"About what?"

There was something in those green eyes, something like determination. Like strength. "It isn't the first time that's happened to me. You are probably right that it won't be the last."

"What?" Something flared in McCoy's gut, hot and sharp and angry. He drew in a breath and let it out to keep himself calm.

"He isn't the first to try. But he isn't the first to fail, either." Chekov straightened, dark pride burning on his face. "I have always fought back, doctor. They have never...no one who has tried..." His throat worked. "They have never gotten what they wanted from me."

Son of a bitch.

There was strength in the kid, but just the sight of it made McCoy's anger grow. No one should have to be strong that way, damn it. "You're telling me someone here...?"

"No. Before I came here." Chekov actually smiled, small and sad. "Before last night I thought that it was past. I thought being an officer, being on this ship, meant I might have finally gotten away from things like this. But I suppose that was...naive."

"Jesus." McCoy sat up, scowling, infuriated all over again.

Chekov returned his look almost impassively. "Just because you thought you were talking about something different last night doesn't mean your words were wrong. It happens, doesn't it? I just have to keep fighting back."

"No. No, kid, Jesus. It doesn't _happen_. It shouldn't."

"You said--"

McCoy cut him off with an angry jerk of his hand. "Stop quoting my own dumbass words at me. I know what I said. People pushing you around, playing pick-on-the-little-guy, yeah. That happens. Someone putting you in a position where their _dick _is in your _mouth_ and you have to bite down to get away...that doesn't happen. That should never god-damned-well happen."

Chekov fell silent, studying McCoy.

McCoy ran a hand over his face, feeling like he was entirely out of his depth. He wasn't meant for talks like this.

He glowered at the padd on his desk, because the glower was unmovable and he didn't want Chekov thinking it was aimed at him. "There's a lot of crap we have to put up with in our lives, kid. Pavel. But not this. Whoever it was that made you think it's _inevitable_ deserves to be kicked in a brig right next to Bauer."

"No one had to tell me." Chekov managed another small, sad smile. "I've always been smart, Doctor. Smart enough to draw my own conclusions."

Damn it. McCoy winced.

"Smart enough, also, that I know what you'll likely say to me about what happened last night." Chekov's smile grew, almost looking sincere. "I am aware that people aren't meant to hurt each other that way. I have read studies, psychological journals. Statistical histories. I'm aware of the causes of such behavior, and I'm very familiar with the effects. I think I can tell you more about this than you can tell me."

McCoy studied him, thrown off by his words, his strange approach to this whole conversation. He didn't understand Chekov, and was keenly aware of that fact right then.

"I, uh...I guess it's not all it's cracked up to be, is it? Being a genius."

Chekov raised his eyebrows, as if curious whether McCoy was actually asking a real question.

McCoy regarded him, silent. If Chekov wanted to talk, even in the form of some strange recitation of research, it was the least McCoy could do to listen to him. It was a new disease for McCoy to handle, and a new patient, and a good doctor had to take the latter into account when figuring out treatment for the former.

"I..." Chekov hesitated, his cheeks going the slightest bit pink. He cleared his throat, glancing at the door behind him as if remembering suddenly that he was supposed to be on duty, that this was a visit ordered by his captain.

He sighed and turned back to McCoy. "I have spent most of my life surrounded by people who were older, bigger. I have been...resented? I suppose that's what it is. I haven't been liked, anyway, by most of those people. What you first thought happened – that I was picked on, or cornered? That is usually what happens. There have always been people who have resented me."

He hesitated, his eyes going distant.

McCoy cleared his throat. "Stay with me, kid. I'm listening."

Chekov focused again. "Doctor, I am only trying to tell you that I'm alright. I only mentioned those other times so that you would know _why_ I am alright. Nothing has happened that hasn't happened before, and I have always been fine."

McCoy had to stop himself from scowling. He wasn't much of a therapist, and apparently Chekov was lousy at being a patient. But there was something about all this, something _to_ this kid who McCoy had never tried to understand.

He wanted to know what it was. "So. You've always been resented, and...?"

"It isn't important."

"Pretend it is." McCoy was stern.

"You..." Chekov shifted in his chair, uncertain. "I...in Russia, in Izhevsk where I was raised..."

McCoy stared at him.

Chekov looked away, but kept going hesitantly. "It is never good to be different in a place like Izhevsk. My family...they are not wealthy. They are practical people. They didn't see how my being smart would ever put food on the table, but..." He shrugged. "Smart is all that I am."

McCoy's eyebrow quirked up, but he didn't say anything.

"I was too smart for Izhevsk, for the schools there. When I was given a chance to study in St. Petersburg my parents sent me gladly. Not because it was particularly important to them, but because the university paid for my schooling and I was one less mouth to feed."

McCoy blinked, because 'university'? The kid was a frigging _kid_. Too young for Starfleet, let alone some university before that.

"How old?"

Chekov smiled, a glimmer of pride chasing some of the solemnity away. "Twelve. The youngest they have ever accepted. Too young, I know. I did not do well. The classes were easy, but...I could not live in the classroom."

There was a lot unsaid there, and McCoy nodded.

"So I decided not to finish there. I learned English and applied for Starfleet."

McCoy almost grinned at the way he tossed off 'I learned English' like it was a quick thing he set aside a weekend to accomplish. "San Fransisco must've been a shock," he said in encouragement when Chekov seemed to be done talking.

Chekov blinked, looking surprised that he was still listening. "A good shock. The heat." He smiled, and for a moment it was the smile of a teenager. "I like the heat."

His file said he was a runner. Marathons, McCoy remembered. Won some awards. The kid probably didn't do anything he couldn't master.

"But the rest of it...not such a shock. It wasn't different from St. Petersburg, not the way I hoped. I thought, because it was Starfleet, that there would be discipline. I thought because of the sciences that there would be others like me there." He sighed. "I was naive again."

McCoy's grin faded. He sat back in his chair, drawing the padd to his lap. Idly, surreptitiously, he called up Chekov's medical history.

Chekov went pink again, maybe misinterpreting McCoy's gesture as impatience. "The point is...whether it was at home or at university or the academy, certain things have never changed. And now they have followed me here. So...I am smart. I draw conclusions. I see that those things will continue to follow me. It is..."

He drew in a breath. For a moment a hint of last night's despair was back on his face, but it was quickly stifled.

"It is disappointing. I wish things were different."

McCoy scowled, barely glancing at the pages of history scrawling over the padd screen. Hell, he knew what he'd see. Abrasions and bruises and broken bones, and no one paying the slightest bit of god damned attention.

"Things are different," he said, gruffer than he meant. "The difference here is that you're not a genius little Russian kid all on your own in the big bad world, okay? You're part of the A crew on the bridge of the Enterprise. And the people who mess with you now? They mess with every single one of us. That's different."

"Bauer is a part of the Enterprise as well."

"Not for long." McCoy had to stop himself from getting up, pacing around. He wanted a couple of fingers of bourbon and a few minutes alone with Ensign Bauer. "Look, maybe you were too young for that university. You were probably too young for Starfleet. Maybe you didn't belong, but you survived it okay."

He set the padd back down, leaving Chekov's records up so he could go through them later and make a few less-than-civil calls back to earth.

"So here's the difference, kid. If you were the one who didn't belong back in school, on the Enterprise it's bastards like Bauer that don't fit."

Chekov frowned. His brow furrowed.

McCoy took his thoughtfulness as a sign that he was on the right track. "You think Jim Kirk is old enough to be a captain? You should hear the way they talk back on Earth. A lot of bitter old idiots who never rose so far, they hate Jim for what he's already got. Hell, kid, look at me. I'm not as young as some of you, but there aren't a lot of CMOs anywhere that don't have heads full of gray hair and fifty years of medicine behind them."

The kid nodded slowly. The dullness of despair was fading from his eyes little by little.

McCoy grinned. "Scotty's turned a thousand years of engineering on its ear, and Kirk's got more victories under his belt that anyone else in the fleet. Uhura speaks about a dozen more languages than the Lieutenant that filled that seat first." He leaned in, lowering his voice, eyes twinkling. "You won't believe it, but even Spock was considered a punk kid when he joined up. Or, you know, the Vulcan equivalent of 'punk kid'."

Chekov's mouth quirked up.

"This is a young ship, kid, full of young people who probably don't belong where they are. But we win anyway. You may have been hot stuff back on earth, but here? I hate to break it to you, boy wonder, but here you're just another face in the crowd. Nothing special at all."

Chekov drew in a breath, his quirk now a real smile. His face lifted, eyes open and receptive as they met McCoy's gaze. "Do you know, Doctor? That's all I ever wanted to be."

McCoy grinned, but whatever he was going to say in response didn't come out. He was stuck, studying Chekov, the sad edges of that smile, those bright green eyes that seemed so fucking full, like the brain right behind them was jammed with every piece of knowledge in the universe and he had to carry it all around with him.

The kid was mystery. McCoy didn't understand him, especially now.

What was it like, having that huge mind in the middle of frozen Russian poverty? To get shipped off at twelve, and from then on to make his own path in a too-big world that was made for older people?

To be so hammered on that he taught himself to expect torment wherever he went, but to be so determined that he went anyway?

McCoy called him _kid_ because he was so painfully young. But had Chekov ever been a kid a day in his life?

He knew too damned much to be a kid.

A little fragment of something he'd once read flitted through his mind, and it seemed fitting since he was pretty sure it was a Russian guy who'd said it. Something about staying true to talent instead of age. Something he never really understood because for himself, age and talent were pretty equivalent.

Made more sense to him suddenly. "'Let the gap between them be embarrassing,'" he muttered to himself. Maybe it was a Russian thing. Jesus.

Chekov tilted his head. "What?"

"Nothing." McCoy stood up to move around the desk. "Look, kid, you--"

"No. That was...'let the gap between them...'" Chekov jumped to his feet, grinning as if the last few minutes never happened. "That is Yevtushenko! 'Be true to your talent, not your age.'"

McCoy felt his face heating. He shrugged. "I don't like to brag about it but I do read books."

Chekov laughed, tenor and light and musical. "It's just that I have always loved him most of Russian poets. I never expected to hear something of Yevtushenko here of all places. And that passage, of all of his work..." He was practically glowing as he spoke. "'_Ravna vashemu talantu, a ne v vashem vozraste. Poroju pust' razryv mezhdu nimi byt' postydnym._'"

"That's the only bit I remember. I wasn't ever really into poetry." McCoy chuckled, moving around the desk to clap Chekov on the shoulder. "It sounds better in the original language," he said.

Chekov grinned up at him. "It sounds better coming from you," he replied. "From me it was always an attempt to find some kind of...art, maybe, in the stupid things that happen to me. Because sometimes I think it's entirely ridiculous."

McCoy hesitated. He regarded Chekov, amused but sensing something there. "What's ridiculous?"

"All of it." Chekov waved a pale, slender hand with unconscious grace. "What I am, and what has come of it. I am a genius," he said, matter of fact. "There are some people who love me for it, some people who hate me, and a great majority of people will never care for an instant. But it's the one thing that has made me who I am. And that's ridiculous, doctor, isn't it?"

McCoy was struck then, for a moment, by the kid. By the knowledge in his eyes. Naive, he called himself, and God knew he probably was. He was too young not to be, no matter how those years may have hurt him.

But he knew enough to know he was naive. He knew himself, and seemed to accept what was there. It was strange, at least to McCoy.

Chekov, he realized, wouldn't have fallen apart if Kirk hadn't ordered him into this little ramshackle therapy session. He would have been fine. He would have kept on thinking that attacks like Bauer's were inevitable, and that would have hurt him. But he carried that around with him already, didn't he?

The kid had himself a fan club of devoted, protective friends, but McCoy knew then as sure as anything that he didn't really need them. Hell, look at what happened the night before: Chekov had to almost bite a guy's dick off to keep it out of his mouth, and when he called Sulu for help it was only because he couldn't lug Bauer all the way to sickbay by himself.

McCoy moved to the door finally, letting it slide open to reveal an almost-deserted sickbay beyond. His hand felt warm and comforting on Chekov's shoulder, so that's where he kept it.

"You know, even geniuses get things wrong now and then, kid."

Chekov laughed, hesitating in the doorway when McCoy did. "My friends take great delight in telling me as much."

"Uh huh. Well, I'm gonna tell you again – you're wrong."

"About what?" Chekov looked up at him, eyes sparkling.

McCoy cleared his throat, that damned flush from earlier not fading. He tugged the kid out of the doorway and headed for the door out of sickbay. "You may be a genius, and maybe that's the one thing that's brought you where you are now, but...you said earlier that smart is all you are. And that's flat-out wrong."

Chekov's steps slowed. His gaze swung over to McCoy, the glitter of humor fading back. "Maybe," he said, slow and thoughtful. "But it's all anyone's ever needed me to be."

McCoy's eyebrows shot up. "Can I be in the room when you tell Sulu and Uhura that?"

Chekov opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again silently. His brow furrowed.

Not pressing the moment – the kid was too smart not to think about it – McCoy walked him out into the corridor and got them moving slowly towards the turbolift.

"You gonna be okay with last night, Pavel?" McCoy pitched his voice low though there was no one in sight. "Doesn't matter if it's happened before, I don't like that it's happened now. I'm no shrink but even I know a guy doesn't stop feeling after his first fight."

Chekov drew in a breath, the furrows leaving his forehead. "I will have nightmares, I think. For a while." He spoke as matter-of-factly as he did about course settings on the bridge. "But I'll be fine."

McCoy didn't care for it, the way Chekov spoke so casually. The way he was so set to deal with it on his own. "Well, look, if I'm not working late here I'm up late in my quarters. So if you feel a nightmare coming on, you come around and knock on my door. Talk my ear off about Russian poetry or whatever. You promise me that, and I'll keep off your case about all this."

He half expected Chekov to argue, to protest his need for help, or ask if he could go to one of his pals instead.

But Chekov kept on being strange. "I can't say no to the man who brought Yevtushenko onto the Enterprise just for me, can I?"

McCoy grinned, suddenly thankful he'd remembered some smidgen of something he'd read ages ago. "Don't go spreading that around, especially to that pointy-eared devil you hang out on the bridge with. I've got a reputation to maintain."

Chekov nodded, solemn but for the humor in his eyes. "I will tell anyone who asks that you were stern and impersonal and swore quite often."

The laughter welled out of McCoy from a deeper place than he was expecting. He reached out the press the panel to summon the lift. "I doubt anyone will question that. Now go on, get back to the bridge."

"I will, sir." The doors slid open and Chekov turned, but he looked back almost the same instant. "Doctor, I don't suppose I am a particularly good patient, and I would never have come if the captain hadn't ordered me to. But you've said things that I haven't thought before, and I'm glad I came. I..." He paused, unsure. "May I say thank you?"

McCoy shrugged. "You just did, kid."

"No." Chekov seemed hesitant. "I mean..." His cheeks lit with red, but he took a step to close the space between them, and leaned up on his toes.

Warm, quick press of lips to McCoy's cheeks, left then right, and Chekov spoke softly in his ear. "_Spasiba, iscelitel'._"

McCoy blinked in surprise, catching just a flash of blushing skin and bright green eyes as Chekov wheeled away from him fast and practically dove into the lift.

For the next few hours, when he caught himself grazing an absent knuckle over invisible lip prints on his cheek, he told himself it was just because it had been a few years since anyone had really touched him in a non-clinical way.


	3. Chapter 3

The best doctors were uptight, obsessive, overprotective bastards. The best doctors took their patients home with them, carried them to the store, to the bar, to bed, into dreams at night and then into the shower in the morning.

The best doctors never finished with a patient entirely, because they knew there was always something they could have done faster, better, simpler.

McCoy had been colleagues with men who weren't the best doctors. The ones who whisked into a sterile exam room after a nurse had done all the work, and spent only as much time with the patient as it took to proclaim their diagnosis.

He'd known some shitty, overpaid idiots with an MD after their names. People who made him ache for good doctors everywhere the way Ensign Hans fucking Bauer made him ache for decent crewmen.

Not many people on the Enterprise knew it, but Len McCoy had himself a reputation before he lost in in the divorce. He'd published a few papers that made news. Medical news, in medical journals, of course. Nothing that ever reached the dusty bars of Iowa, Jim was quick to remind him when he was drunk enough to bitch about everything he'd lost.

But he had made news. A couple of the instructors at Starfleet Medical had known his name, and for a sawbones from Macon that was a hell of a thing.

He made news because Len McCoy had never met a mundane diagnosis. Everything that hurt his patients hurt him, and it was through obsessive study of some pretty unremarkable diseases that he'd made the breakthroughs he had.

He was a gruff man. He didn't coddle. But he didn't have to coddle, because he knew he would do his damnedest to cure. It was easy to tell a sick man to suck it up and stop whining when he knew he'd devote hours, days, weeks of his life to curing that man once he was out of the exam room.

It wasn't something he advertised about himself. It was something Jim Kirk knew, and something Spock had figured out even in the brief time they'd served together. Most of the crew- the ones who were still strangers to McCoy, eyed him like they were intimidated when he passed in the halls. He'd had more than one pale-faced ensign back away from him in sickbay and mumble something about waiting for Nurse Chapel.

But the crewmen he'd had to do serious work on, they knew better.

Chekov he'd never had to patch up before. The most substantial contact he had with Chekov before Bauer was in the form of bitching about the kid's age. McCoy knew Chekov understood him, though, after Bauer. After their little chat in McCoy's office.

He knew because when he left the office hours after his shift that evening, the duty nurse, O'Rourke, held something out for him with a grin as he tried to escape.

"Delivery for you, doctor."

He took it with a cocked eyebrow – there was no small share of smart asses on the Enterprise, and anonymous deliveries could mean a whole range of things.

But this wasn't a joke. It was a book.

Used and well-read, thick and heavy and real. No replication, no off-planet copy. This was straight from a dusty bookstore on a city street anywhere on Earth.

He smiled when he saw the faded golden imprint of Cyrillic lettering on the spine of the book.

His quarters was just down the way – his overdeveloped sense of duty demanded close proximity to sickbay – and soon he was shut up in his room and flipping the book carefully open to blink bemusedly down at page after page of blocky, foreign print.

Something thumped to the carpet from the front of the book, and he crouched to pick up a thin plastic data chip.

There was a note stuffed under the book's cover, written in small, crowded writing so neat it could have been typeface: _You said his words sound better in the original language. They also look better. There are translations on the data chip, but a chip alone is a bad way to say 'thank you'. _

And slightly smaller underneath, and if it were an afterthought, _You don't like poetry, I know, but suffering through one little volume would be a very generous way to say 'you're welcome'._

McCoy chuckled to himself. He shut the book and examined the cover more closely. It was authentic and old and well-loved, that was plain, and he'd be returning it to Chekov.

But it'd be rude not to say you're welcome first, wouldn't it?

So he threw off his duty jacket and poured his usual after-shift bourbon and settled in to find out what some dead Russian guy named Yevtushenko had to say about the world.

* * *

"What do you mean by that?" Kirk eyed Spock over the chess board even as he answered McCoy. The game, as it usually did, was making him irritable, but they weren't so far into it that he brushed McCoy off.

McCoy shrugged, sitting back in his chair and smirking at the ongoing game with the lazy enjoyment of an entertained spectator. "They were all one-syllable words, Jim. Well, all but that last one, but I won't abbreviate the guy's name in the interest of dumbing down the question that much more."

He caught the slightest twitch of Spock's mouth and felt that little ray of triumph he always felt when something he said made the great Vulcan mask slip for an instant.

Kirk caught it too, and he scowled at Spock before scowling over at McCoy. "I don't know why the hell I spend all my time with assholes."

"Deep down you know your ego needs the exposure," McCoy said with a shrug. "Now answer the question."

"As soon as you tell me what you meant. And I'm serious, smart-ass: what do I think of Chekov...as his captain? As his shipmate? As some guy who's met him? How are you asking the question?"

McCoy considered that, not quite sure of the answer right away. Considering what he and Kirk knew about Chekov that they hadn't known a couple days back, it was a fair enough point. "If I wanted to make this some official conversation I'd've asked when we were both on duty. Sir."

Kirk rolled his eyes at the 'sir' but turned his attention back to the game. "I think he's too old."

McCoy blinked. "Maybe two syllables are too complicated even for a name?"

"Bones." Kirk reached for a pawn and then drew his hand back with a scowl. "You're an ass, and I'm serious. Again. Go figure." He flashed a quick-fire grin. "But no. He's too old. For someone his age, he is way too old." He tapped his skull with his index finger for those last few words, and then reached out and quick as a flash shifted a knight on the board.

McCoy glanced at Spock, saw the quirk in his eyebrow that meant the move was unexpected. Spock leaned in and began his slow study of the board.

Gonna be another long game, he figured.

Kirk sat back, dismissed for the moment, and grabbed his beer from the table beside the board. "You realize when you and me were thrown onto this ship still in cadet uniforms he was an ensign? He was done, Bones. Seventeen years old, done with the Academy and already assigned to the ship we landed on practically at random."

He shook his head, taking a draw off the bottle and letting his slouch get more pronounced as he focused on McCoy. "I went through his records - the records of all the bridge crew - after that first mission when we had some time to kill on Earth. And it's creepy."

"Creepy," Spock repeated without looking up. That dry, completely inflection-less voice that meant he was amused.

"Yeah, creepy." Kirk smirked over at him. "It's a technical term. Captain parlance."

Spock glanced at McCoy. And even though there wasn't a thing on his face, not a single speck of reaction or emotion, McCoy liked Spock most for looks like that. Because he had learned to read those looks perfectly.

McCoy grinned to himself as Spock turned back to the board to formulate his next move.

"He was emancipated, you know that? Would've had to be to get assigned to a ship - there's no way Starfleet would let a minor serve out in the field if there were parents to answer to – but he was emancipated even before that, in his second year. Barely fifteen. He's got some dad in Russia or wherever but the guy isn't mentioned in Chekov's records more than a couple of times. He's like this non-issue, which is weird."

"If Chekov is emancipated there isn't anything 'weird' about it at all."

Kirk ignored Spock, tilting back in his chair to frown at McCoy. "He's too old," he said again.

McCoy just nodded. He hadn't thought about it in that sense, but Jim had a point. As surprising as it was to have any seventeen year old serving on a Starfleet vessel, the strangest thing was that it worked. Chekov worked.

Put the fact of his age aside and Chekov was just one more crewman. Smarter than most, but different in no real other way. He had protectors, but McCoy had figured out just talking to the kid that he didn't need them. He didn't cry for his parents, he didn't get overwhelmed by social expectations the way McCoy knew some genius types did. And that, as Jim said, was weird.

He should have been different. He should have needed a little comfort now and then, a little help learning how to be an adult. Every teenager in the universe needed that. No seventeen year old ought to know himself the way Chekov did. They all thought they did, maybe, but the genuine self-awareness and acceptance about his life that showed in Chekov's face...

Weird.

He just couldn't tell if it was good or bad.

"-getting at, anyway?"

McCoy focused on Jim again. "What?"

Jim rolled his eyes, but his gaze on McCoy was just intense enough to indicate he was working those Captain instincts he'd developed so fast. "Why are you asking? Your report about the other night didn't make it seem like you were all that worried about him."

McCoy frowned at Jim, eyes going to Spock.

"Oh, relax. Spock knows." Jim waved him off. "He's the first officer, Bones. He sees all the reports I send back to Starfleet."

McCoy's spine stiffened, his hand curling around his glass. "It didn't occur to you that Chekov might want to keep this confidential?"

Kirk blinked. "Besides him and Bauer the only people who know what happened are in this room." He grinned. "Or are you saying Spock's a gossip?"

Spock glanced at McCoy, eyebrow arched.

McCoy scowled back at them both. "That isn't the point." His eyes went to Spock. "You work with the kid a lot, don't you?"

Spock regarded him. "He has expressed an interest in the sciences that his education at the Academy didn't satisfy. There is nothing official in our lessons."

"Yeah, well. Unofficially, we're talking about a guy who's never been among peers. A kid like that doesn't know how to have friends like he knows how to have teachers. Probably cares too damned much about your opinion of him. Both of you."

Spock studied him like he was some kind of interesting specimen. "I don't intend to give Ensign Chekov any indication that my opinion of him has changed by recent events, Doctor, if only because my opinion hasn't changed in the slightest."

McCoy growled but slumped back against the chair. "Just see that it stays that way."

Spock turned back to the board without bothering to answer.

Kirk's eyes stayed sharp on McCoy for a moment before he suddenly grinned. "Jesus, you've joined the kid's fan club, haven't you?"

"Fan club?" McCoy retorted as if he hadn't thought of Chekov's overprotective friends by that exact term before.

"You have! Christ, Bones, I knew you had a soft spot somewhere deep down, but come on!" Kirk laughed, gesturing his beer with a waving hand. "Fell for that big-eyed innocence, huh? Got you feeling all paternal?"

"Go to hell," McCoy leaned over, feeling hot and prickly about the whole thing, and thumped his glass on the table by Jim. "One of your crew, a _kid _on your crew, was nearly raped, Jim. If you _aren't_ feeling paternal or protective or pissed about it then that says something about you, doesn't it? Not me."

Jim sat up, fast, his expression freezing instantly. "Hey."

"No. No hey." McCoy stood up. "You think it's weird he was emancipated? I think he's a kid who never had a single soul looking out for him his whole life, and that's gonna end here. You want to call it joining his fan club, fine. I call it being his doctor."

"Sit down, Bones. Get off the fucking pedestal. No one's gonna stop you from doing your job." Jim spoke easily enough, but there was steel behind his eyes.

McCoy knew that steel. It meant he'd gone too far, pissed Jim off in a real way.

Jim's tempers came and went fast, and resentment wasn't a lasting thing with him. Still, it wasn't a great way to spend an evening.

"Forget it." McCoy spoke with a hint of apology, but firm all the same. "It's late and I've been pulling too many hours lately. It usually takes me a few more drinks to start pissing you off like this. Must mean I need some rest."

Jim sat back, eyes narrowed, but after a moment he nodded. "Whatever, go be old and sleep."

McCoy flashed a smile, since insults meant forgiveness. "Yeah. You two enjoy your game. Jim, I hope your crushing defeat goes well."

Jim grinned and turned back to the board, anger already forgotten. "It always does."

* * *

It was a bit of a trick, keeping the data padd steady in one hand and keeping the book open and undamaged in the other as he looked from original verse to translation. There was a lot of awkward shifting in his chair, of balancing everything perfectly on one folded leg just in time for his foot to fall asleep and his position to have to change.

But there was something kinda nice about reading (or looking at, at least) both at once. He read the English version and understood it, but the book itself was almost like having someone there sharing it with him.

There were notes written in the margins – which at first seemed like sacrilege to McCoy but eventually seemed to fit the idea of the poet pretty well. Notes in flowing, strange Cyrillic scrawl, and in precise and neat English.

Faded lines of ink that made McCoy picture a reader moving his finger back and forth over the same words again and again, like some kind of meditation on the text. There were pages that flipped open so completely they had to be particularly well-read.

It was like Chekov was there, pointing out those parts with a big-eyed grin, saying 'look, see, this one is wonderful,' in that hyper tenor accent of his.

A lot of it, even with the kid's imagined pointing and gushing, didn't do much for McCoy. Poetry always struck him as fairly pretentious. In McCoy's opinion a poet was a guy who not only wanted everyone to hear what he had to say, but wanted them to marvel over the fancy way he said it.

Still, this Yevtushenko guy wasn't all bad. There was one little poem about a bunch of sailors getting drunk on cologne because they were out of liquor at some port stop. Bunch of shit-faced Russian guys sobbing over their moms and smelling like a barber shop. Weird, and it made McCoy laugh a little.

So, not all bad.

He did pay a little bit more attention to the ones that were particularly marked in the book, the ones the pages tended to fall open to. Chekov hadn't seemed overly impressed with the drunk sailors; the ones he seemed to go back to were odd, melancholy pieces.

The notes he'd written in English were random, fragmented things. A word, now and then. A place, or a name, beside a few random lines in the middle of mostly unmarked poems.

Kirk's name, the first to catch McCoy's eye, was written in light ink, jagged and small as if the kid was worried he'd get in trouble for it.

_It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,/to fail, to leap into emptiness./Probably, only in despair is it possible/to speak all the truth to this age._

So read the translated version of the lines by Kirk's name. McCoy sat for a good few minutes and thought about that, wondered if there wasn't something lost in the translation. But the more he considered it...well, leaping into emptiness was kind of Jim's thing, wasn't it? If he didn't take a flying jump into the middle of the darkest situations he wouldn't be him.

Sleeplessly delirious...that went without saying. Jim never edged them into fights they should never have been able to win – he _threw_ them in. Without hesitation, without letting anyone question him, he had them knee-deep in battle before they could think about how hopeless it was. And they always came out the other side.

The Enterprise had made its reputation, even so early into its first five-year mission, because Jim Kirk had never seen a battle that his crew couldn't win.

There was Scotty's name written by a poem so crammed with words of obsessive, all-consuming love that for a few blushing minutes McCoy thought he was going to have to talk to Chekov about the difference between a healthy crush and an unhealthy one. But a few choice underlined words and a little thought made McCoy realize that the poem was a reflection of Scotty's own unhealthy crush.

And there wasn't any talking Scotty out of his love. Not when the ship he adored seemed to return his feelings so entirely.

He was a bright kid, Chekov. Bright about the things that geniuses weren't always so bright about. He was insightful about people; he wasn't so absorbed in his own over-sized brain. It seemed he spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about the people around him.

So when McCoy saw his own name jotted in a margin, seeming to encompass an entire little poem, he was hesitant to read it. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what kind of grim things the kid thought about him.

McCoy gave off a vibe, gruff and impersonal and put-upon. He did it on purpose. It wasn't an act, but it was...well, a little more on the surface than it probably had to be. He wasn't sure he wanted to see how that act came across to the kid. He didn't want to know that the kid regarded him as some scary bastard, but had to come talk to him anyway about this rotten thing that happened.

He spent a little time just looking over the Cyrillic print of the original poem, until he realized he was being a self-conscious idiot and switched over to the English translation.

_They tell me, shaking their heads:/'You should be kinder. You are somehow furious.'_

_I used to be kind. It didn't last long._

It was short and biting. About a guy who used to be nice before it was driven out of him. Someone who was made to be bitter and then accused of being unhappy by the same people who did it.

And. Yeah.

He read that thing a couple of times, and turned back to studying the Cyrillic version as if the unreadable words were some kind of artistic rendering of the words. Which they kind of were.

And then he turned the page, and decided not to think for a while.

* * *

The last poem in the book was destroyed. Completely. Ink lines thick and black scarred the words, defaced the Cyrillic. The same ink that had made notes so lovingly throughout the book had seemed to snap and take revenge on this one particular poem.

It wasn't subtle, the defacement. It was oddly extreme. McCoy pulled himself from a far-away place and traced over the ink scars. The lines had been made so deeply that he could feel them, skimming the pads of his fingers over the page and feeling the indentations.

There were a few rough and messy notes in the margins near the top, but it seemed that the reader abandoned the work halfway through and decided to simply hack it away instead.

When he checked the English version on the data padd, he found it was one poem short. This last poem, whatever it was that riled Chekov up, had been left off the translations.

Curioser and curioser.

McCoy was a smart guy on the fanciest starship in the Federation, surrounded by computers that could research any number of things. He could have had the piece translated – under the black marks most of the lettering was still visible.

But he didn't. Just considering the idea made him feel dishonest, and that was a feeling he hated.

* * *

There was a lot of gossip in the halls about Bauer being thrown in the brig. That gossip only got worse when the Enterprise swung by a station off Syntalus Seven and Bauer was escorted to the transporter room in cuffs to be shipped back to earth.

Everyone seemed to know that it had something to do with Chekov – the security guards wouldn't have kept that secret – but the details seemed to range from Chekov's attempted murder to the kid resenting a fellow navigator and using his influence with Kirk to get his competition thrown off the ship.

The second theory never caught fire, of course, but McCoy did hear a theme in the gossip that was a little worrying: people thought Kirk was biased towards his main bridge crew, enough that he would have another crewman arrested and shipped home at the slightest provocation.

He mentioned it to Jim, but the captain didn't seem worried. The optimism of youth, McCoy thought with some disgust – Jim was a good captain, so he seemed to think everyone would realize he was a good captain in time.

When McCoy argued, Jim dismissed him as cynical. Pessimistic.

McCoy found himself thinking of a poem. '_I used to be kind. It didn't last long.'_

He didn't wonder if the different rumors had reached Chekov. He didn't actually think much about Chekov at all.

Well.

That was a lie.

He thought about the kid. About his past, and the poems, and those quick little kisses to McCoy's cheek. But he didn't think about what happened to him, and that he was no doubt still dealing with it pretty close to the surface.

He didn't even realize he wasn't thinking about it until maybe ten days after the night with Bauer, when there was a chirp of the door sensor of McCoy's quarters way too late for it to be casual.

"Open up," he grumbled at the door, not leaving his chair or his bourbon.

To his mild surprise it was a frowning, out of uniform Hikaru Sulu who came through the door, dragging a rumpled-looking Chekov behind him.

McCoy sat there behind his glass of bourbon and raised his eyebrows, waiting.

Sulu scowled as he hauled Chekov in and all but pushed him forward. There were growing spots of red up Chekov's cheeks.

"Evening, boys," McCoy drawled out when neither of them spoke right away.

"Hey, doc." Sulu seemed to remember his usually impeccable manners. His grip on Chekov's arm didn't relax. "Hope it's not too late?"

McCoy shrugged, waving his glass and gesturing at the data padd that held the patient reports he was going through. Supposed to be going through, anyway.

"Good." Sulu gestured towards Chekov, the movement sharp. "Look. I tell him to talk to me, he says no. He says he's already talked to you. So you need to get him talking again."

"Again?" McCoy's eyes went quickly to Chekov's face.

The kid looked a little tired, a little rumpled, but not so bad that it set off any internal alarms. He looked away from both of them, his jaw set, and didn't speak.

Sulu spoke instead. "He isn't sleeping. Not since last week. He's acting strange and he keeps lying to me when I ask him whats going on. And that's bullshit. So you get through to him, doc, before he falls asleep on the bridge and gets us all killed."

Chekov winced, injured eyes going to Sulu.

McCoy looked back and forth between them for a moment, then set his glass down. "Come on, kid. Sit down."

Sulu turned on his heel and stalked out of the room the moment his command had been accepted.

Chekov didn't move, looking from McCoy to the door as if contemplating following him. "It's late, and you're off duty, and--"

He cut off as the door slid shut behind Sulu, leaving them in silence. His shoulders went square, his eyes wounded.

McCoy knew what he was thinking. "Sulu's your best friend, right?"

Chekov looked back at him. He nodded, though it seemed less than certain.

"I'd think it'd hurt my feelings pretty bad if my best friend wouldn't let me help when something was wrong. I'd probably get a little pissed too." McCoy gestured for him to take a seat.

Chekov frowned, but moved in slowly and contemplated the uncomfortable piece of Starfleet standard that passed for a couch. "There is nothing he can do to help. What good is there in talking about it?"

"What bad is there in talking about it?"

"There is a lot of bad." Chekov sighed, shooting one last look at the doorway Sulu had vanished out of. "He will be angry, but there will be no one for him to take his anger out on since Bauer has already left the ship."

He moved around and sat down on the couch gingerly. He didn't look at McCoy, just stared at his lap.

"He will not know how to treat me because he will feel as if he's let me down, as if any of this were his fault. He will convince me to tell Nyota, and they will both be so worried for me that this will just be one more thing that keeps me from being an equal in their eyes."

McCoy reached for his glass, sitting back in his chair to study the kid. "I'll give you that as a very strong possibility. But here's what else might happen – you might tell him the truth, remind him that you already took care of it yourself and that the threat is gone, and ask that he respect your wishes to keep his trap shut."

Chekov studied him, but sighed. "To what end, then? I don't want Hikaru to have to keep secrets on my behalf."

"I think that should be his choice, kid." McCoy shrugged. "To the end that...he'll get off your back. You could talk to him about your nightmares when you have them. You can maybe start realizing that you've got some people here you can trust." He flashed a wry smile. "If nothing else, it'll give you someone better to talk to than a grouchy asshole like me."

Chekov hesitated. He echoed McCoy's small smile. "I don't mind talking to you, doctor."

"No? Then why haven't you?"

Chekov blinked.

"Is Sulu right? You're not sleeping? I seem to remember making you promise you'd come to me if you had nightmares."

Understanding chased the confusion from Chekov's eyes, but he looked away from McCoy. "To what end?" he asked again. "Bad dreams are a normal response to a disturbing experience. Talking would do nothing to change that."

McCoy grimaced. "You sound like Spock."

"There are worse people to sound like," Chekov answered.

"Spock's a Vulcan, kid. What's normal for him isn't normal for you."

"You didn't answer my question, doctor." Chekov shifted on the couch, facing McCoy again. "If bad dreams are normal, and talking will do nothing to change it, than what use is the talking?"

Stubborn like Spock, too. Jesus.

"You want to know the point, fine." McCoy took a sip of his drink and set the glass down, straightening in his chair and giving Chekov his most stern doctor look. "The point is that you've got this idea that you're still on your own. That you're still different from everyone, the way you were back in Russia and in St. Petersburg and at Starfleet Academy. By keeping everything to yourself you're only perpetuating that belief."

Chekov studied him, listening, not instantly denying or arguing. McCoy gave him credit for being receptive to argument – one thing he and Spock didn't have in common.

"Hell, Pavel, you've got Sulu worrying himself to death because you don't think you can trust him enough to talk to him about anything – and I haven't seen her tonight but I dare you to tell me Nyota isn't feeling the same way. You've got friends here, pal, friends who don't see you as different and so don't understand when you wall yourself up and keep everything from them."

"It isn't about trust. Hikaru knows that."

"Why? Because you told him?" McCoy snorted. "Look...if something happened to Sulu and he refused to tell you anything, you'd be pissed. You'd probably think he didn't talk to you because he thinks you're a kid, because he doesn't trust you enough to help him deal with things. He could tell you until he's blue in the face that it's got nothing to do with you, and you would never believe it. Tell me I'm wrong."

Chekov plucked at the seam of his uniform slacks and didn't answer.

McCoy sighed, studying the down-turned eyes and guileless profile. "You tell your friends the truth, Chekov. Those are doctor's orders. You tell them what's going on, and when they treat you like a survivor that's because you are one. When they get pissed off it's because they're your friends."

He leaned forward in his chair, reaching out and tapping a hand on Chekov's arm. "You've probably got a shitty history when it comes to depending on people. I get that, but don't turn it into a shitty future. You're too damned young to be a cynic."

Chekov nodded, almost to himself. His mouth turned up just a bit at the corners. "Optimism is not a very Russian trait."

McCoy raised a single eyebrow – he had picked up a few things from Spock, too. "'And if in this wide world I come to die, than it's certain to be from sheer joy that I lived.'"

Just like the last time McCoy accidentally brought up that poet Chekov loved so much, Chekov's entire bearing changed with those few words. He sat up, face splitting in a smile, as if all the crap in the world was suddenly lifted up off his shoulders just like that.

The resilience of youth.

"You use Yevtushenko against me, doctor!" The protest would have been more convincing if it hadn't sounded so delighted. "Did you read the book? Did you enjoy any of it? Lie to me if you have to."

McCoy laughed. "I liked a lot of it. I'll hang to it for a few more days if you don't want it back in a hurry."

Chekov nodded, eager. "The chip you can have, of course. I have no need of English translations. That was meant for you."

At least the kid wasn't going to argue that the actual book was meant to be a present for keeps. Something like that was obviously way too personal.

Which just reminded McCoy...

"Do me a favor. I know it's something you'll like." He got out of his seat and wandered over to the table behind the couch where the book and data padd sat waiting. Taking the book and leaving the padd, he stretched it to the front of the couch.

Chekov's long-fingered, pale hand took the book as gently and carefully as McCoy had handled it. "What favor?"

"Since we've established his words sound better in the original language, I want to know how that one poem sounds."

Chekov all but beamed at him, turning the pages carefully with the book resting on his lap. "Which one?"

McCoy sat down beside him, leaning over the flip towards the back of the book. It felt weird speaking the words out loud, but he did: "'I used to be kind. It didn't last long.'"

Chekov's brow furrowed but he nodded. He turned to the poem and for a moment just sat there regarding the page.

McCoy sat back, waiting, and when Chekov didn't start right away he looked over.

Chekov's finger was brushing over McCoy's name, written in the margin, and his cheeks were bright red. He'd probably handed that book over without remembering that some of his notes were readable.

McCoy smiled, feeling a little puff of warmth in his chest at how embarrassed the kid looked, over something as innocuous as that. Chekov really did seem like a _nice _kid, and that was more rare than people liked to admit.

"Come on, kid, I want to hear it," he said gently into the silence.

Chekov obeyed, clearing his throat and staring at the page, though McCoy suspected he knew most of these poems by heart. "It is called...Fury. _Neistovstvo, _in the original. '_Oni govorjat mne, trjastijushh ih golovki...'"_

McCoy sat back and listened. It was always a little disconcerting, hearing someone whose voice was well-known suddenly lilting in this other language. Chekov's English was clunky at times, his accent stressing the wrong words and doing that V-into-W thing that cracked up most of the crew. But even though McCoy didn't speak it he knew just from the listening that there wasn't anything clunky about the kid's Russian. The light tenor of that young voice sounded more at home with that language. More comfortable.

McCoy found himself wondering if Uhura spoke any Russian, or if there was anyone on board who did. It would be kind of a shame if Chekov had no one he could talk to in his own language.

"'Z_hizn' interesna kogda vy zljushhi,'"_ Chekov finished, looking up at McCoy almost bashfully.

McCoy grinned. "'Life is interesting when you're furious,'" he paraphrased the last line. "See, yeah. I like that one."

The shyness drained from Chekov, leaving him relieved. "Perhaps you have a Russian soul, doctor. There is a Georgia in my country too, you know."

McCoy chuckled. "I'll take that as a compliment, even though I hate the cold and I'm not too fond of cabbage."

Chekov grinned. "It's not all cabbage. Some day I will bring you piroshky the way my grandmother would make, with a steaming bowl of borscht and fresh sour cream. I will call you Leonid, in the Russian style, and we will talk about Yevtushenko."

McCoy reached over and took the book from the kid's lap, turning pages carefully past Kirk's segment, and Scotty's love song to his ship. "Only if you're willing to sit down to a meal of fried chicken and baked beans – McCoy family recipe, of course – and listen to me ramble on about my own Georgia."

Chekov's grin softened into a warm smile. "I would be honored, doctor."

Funny. He never figured he'd have anything in common with a kid like Chekov, but this was someone who pined for home in the same ways McCoy pined for his. A kid who brought books of poetry on the ship with him and wanted nothing more than to talk about anything that came from his birthplace.

The kid talked about Russia the way McCoy felt about his own home, and McCoy knew full well how few of these worldly crewmen around them felt the same way about wherever they were from.

The invitation for a culinary cultural exchange might have been spontaneous, but McCoy wondered if he might not actually try it sometime. Invite the kid up for dinner, fry up some whiskey-battered chicken and replicate whatever substance might come closest to molasses to bake some beans.

And...not that McCoy was overly curious about Russia, but it'd be a kick to spend a night letting Chekov vanish into his heritage the same way. There was something really _bright_ about him when he was happy.

Maybe Chekov wouldn't mind reading some Twain, or Faulkner, to get into the spirit of things.

McCoy flipped to the last poem in the book, the one that hadn't been translated on that padd, that had been crossed out with dark lines of ink.

He glanced over at Chekov, and found the kid's eyes already on him and the page he'd turned to.

He didn't even get his mouth open to speak when Chekov moved, pushing to his feet. "I've troubled you enough for one night, doctor. Thank you for your time."

He'd seen McCoy looking at that poem. The quickness of the retreat was hardly subtle.

But McCoy didn't pry. He shut the book and set it on the coffee table and stood up. "This is the second time I'm telling you, kid – you're welcome to come by here, okay? Anytime."

Chekov nodded, cheeks pink. "I'm not used to..."

"Asking for help. Yeah, no kidding." McCoy slipped a hand to the kid's back as they headed for the door. "Well, it's not help anymore. You've got to stop by again, read me more of that book, and I've got to start finding some good old Southern literature to lend you in turn."

Chekov beamed, eyes sparkling in the dim light of McCoy's quarters. "That would be nice."

"Okay then. I expect to see you here without one of your friends having to drag you in kicking and screaming, you got it?"

"I will make a nuisance of myself if it will make you happy, doctor."

"It will, kid." McCoy grinned as the door slid open. His hand slipping from Chekov's back almost reluctantly. "Now go track down Sulu and have a talk."

* * *

He used to be kind. It didn't last long.

He was never a particularly cheerful man. Sarcastic, yeah, he was always that. Pessimistic, sure. He never pretended that before Jocelyn he was some giggly burst of fucking sunshine. But he had moments of real happiness with her, at the start.

When he was building up his practice with Jocelyn waiting at home, when Joanne came to life as this squirming pink Half-Him, when they laughed together and kissed to say hi and walked for miles in open green parks with the baby stroller and that little shivering rat dog she made him buy...

Well, he was happy then. He was hopeful. He was kind.

It didn't last long.

He didn't have enough ambition, she said at the beginning of the end. His friends from medical school, from the internships at the U of Georgia hospital, were all going into private practice in cushy downtown offices or lavish modern facilities in Atlanta. Len was happy to take a junior position with a old-timer doc he'd known growing up in Macon.

He didn't have enough ambition, and they weren't making enough money, and if she was going to stay at home raising his daughter and taking care of his dog he could at least earn enough to keep them all comfortable.

The fights got ugly fast. She'd tell him she didn't marry a med student just to live a middle-class life. He'd accuse her of marrying A Med Student. Like any of his idiot classmates would have done fine if he hadn't worked out. Anyone with some money in their future.

He'd go out with friends for beers and she'd pitch a fit. He'd stay home and adore his toddling little daughter and she'd accuse him of trying to turn Joanne against her.

If he didn't try to get close to her at night she'd accuse him of being cold and harsh. If he did try then he was a horny idiot who only cared about one thing.

And when she did try to make things nice, when she'd plan out a dinner or book a sitter so they could go out for a night...well, that was never good enough to make up for the rest.

Eventually they figured that the whole marriage wasn't good enough.

In front of the judge Len McCoy was a temperamental workaholic. An unfeeling, emotionally frigid cipher. Probably cheating on her, God only knew, because she'd lost her figure having his daughter.

McCoy was so stunned by it all that he didn't start throwing his own shots in defense until way after it was too late.

She got the house, the car, the dog, the daughter. She got the friends, the sympathy. She got almost half his paycheck, even now. She got his happiness, what little there was of it. She got his kindness, because once she was gone there wasn't a fucking trace left.

And McCoy, who still wasn't quite sure just how or why it happened the way it did, was resolute not to try again. Having a family and a home get ripped away from him had left too many jagged edges on him. If it were to happen again he doubted there'd be anything whole left of him at all.

So now his happiness came in small blips. Tiny doses.

Curing a previously unknown virus before it killed anyone on the crew. Making Spock have to repress a smile at some idiot joke or another. Making a hurt Russian kid laugh.

Those things came and went, and they were nice. But when they were gone, it was just McCoy left. McCoy in his quarters drinking bourbon, watching the time tick by, wondering if the divorce hadn't actually killed him and his body was just slow to catch up.

He'd gone to her a puppy dog, wagging his tail, like how that damned Yevtushenko poem went. She hacked off his tail and then told the judge to look at how he never wagged it anymore.

But he used to have something. He used to be more than he was now. He used to be...kind.

Hell. Maybe he hated poetry after all.


	4. Chapter 4

Spock's face was expressive as hell, showing humor, annoyance, fury, pain. Right out there for everyone to see, if only they knew what to look for.

It had taken McCoy a while to learn him, though. He didn't know how to interpret the guy for a long time, but like getting to know him in any other way, it came with time. He was expressive, open, but every bit of that expression was held in one particular facial feature that few people would've thought to focus on.

Spock emoted with his eyebrows.

And he was a fucking Picasso about it, too. He could angle one of those pointy brows of his so slightly it wasn't even noticeable, but just like that McCoy could see his amusement, or irritation. When nothing in his eyes changed, nothing in his mouth or jaw or the way he held himself, one check of those brows made him an open book.

McCoy got a kick out of it, once he learned it. Felt like he was sharing a secret with the guy, every time Spock shot him one of those expressionless looks of his and McCoy could read it so well it's like Spock was speaking out loud.

Jim knew how to read Spock. Nyota probably did too – McCoy made it a point not to hang around the two of them together all that often. But McCoy would bet money that they were the only three on the ship who could do it.

So when the door slid open and let McCoy into Spock's too-warm quarters that night for their usual dinner and argument, one look at the Vulcan's sardonically-lofted brow told McCoy a whole paragraph of words.

"Ditched us again, huh? Who is it this time?"

Spock's brow lowered, his point made. "A Lieutenant from the botany lab. Unfortunately Jim's only description came in the form of a remarkably graphic gesture that I believe was meant to refer to the size of the woman's...physical attributes."

McCoy laughed, half-tempted to feign ignorance and see if he could get Spock to imitate the gesture. "Hell with him, then. Unless you're gonna bully me into a game in his place?"

"Doctor," Spock answered, "I have a great deal of respect for your medical expertise, and your overall intelligence. But your abilities when it comes to a game of three-dimensional chess..."

"Why do you think I always offer to watch?" McCoy chuckled. He went over to the little kitchen Spock kept so bare and sterile. "So what's on the menu? Dinner, or another round of cultural exploration that's gonna give me the runs?"

"I will take care of it. Sit down and stop being coarse." Spock wasn't much for showing emotions, but he was big on expressing disapproval.

McCoy shot him a grin and did as he was told.

Spock was efficient with dinner – of course he was – and brought over what looked like a simple pasta dish. Pink, but pasta. McCoy poked at it for a while, just long enough to annoy Spock and therefore achieve his goal, and then settled in to eat.

They got along well when they weren't fighting. Well, they got along well when they _were _fighting, but when they weren't they were damned comfortable together. Even without Jim around to fill the silences.

"You ever read poetry?" McCoy found himself asking randomly, knowing Spock was a hell of a lot more cultured than he was.

"Of course," Spock answered, as if the question itself was absurd. "My education on Vulcan placed a great deal of emphasis on the fine arts. Poetry as a form of cultural expression and historical documentation is an invaluable research tool. Without understanding a people's artistic history, there can be no true understanding of that people. A society's beliefs, its moods, its--"

"Yeah, yeah. You answered the question ten minutes ago." McCoy sat back, thinking. He hadn't really had a reason for asking, just that this Russian guys words were suddenly in his head. "I never saw the point of it before now. If you've got something to say just say it, you know? What the hell's the point of restricting it to verses and little rhyming couplets?"

"The restriction into versus and rhymes, when that is the chosen format, is precisely the point, Leonard." Spock tilted his head, studying him. "Why bother setting words to music, if you simply want to make a point? Why bother painting an image you could simply photograph? I'm hardly a proper spokesman for artistic expression, but--"

McCoy waved that off. "I've seen that weird little lute thing you keep in here. You can't tell me you play music as some form of intellectual exercise."

"Ah. Yes." Spock seemed caught off-guard. "Well, an argument could be made for the dexterity and coordination that comes with the learning of an instrument being a less than artistic motivation."

McCoy laughed. "You don't play that thing to improve your dexterity, Spock. Come off it."

"All I said was that the argument could be made," Spock answered blandly. "What any of this has to do with poetry is beyond me."

"Yeah." McCoy sat back, toying with the remains of surprisingly tasty pink noodles. "Chekov let me borrow this book, this poet. I dunno, it was just in my mind. No real point to bringing it up at all."

"I see. I must say I've never cared overly much for poetry from earth. Like the people who live there, it strikes me as very unfocused. Brief, earth works. I expect a single subject can't hold the attention of even one of your poets for very long as a time."

"There's probably some truth in that," McCoy allowed. Normally he'd let himself get good and riled up when Spock made a go at humans, but 'unfocused' was hardly the worst insult Spock had lobbed at McCoy's species lately.

Spock cleared his throat, eyebrow rising just the slightest bit. Curiosity. "You are borrowing books of poetry from Ensign Chekov."

McCoy flushed. "I didn't ask for it, he just brought it by."

"But you're reading it."

"Well, it'd be rude not to." McCoy scowled at the little twitch of amused eyebrow across from him. "I can handle a little bit of culture, you know. Now and then."

"I had no doubt of that, Leonard, I simply thought that you would rather run screaming from it than handle it."

"Jim's right – you're an ass." McCoy flashed him a crooked grin. "These lessons of yours..." He stopped, wondering why he kept starting them on subjects he didn't mean to go on with.

"Lessons." Spock waited, and thought about it when McCoy didn't keep going. "You mean my lessons with Ensign Chekov? I've told you, there's nothing official about them."

"Well, what the hell do you two do, anyway? You get together and banter about relativistic physics just for kicks?"

Spock sighed. "And now I get to experience another human trait – anti-intellectualism."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Answer the question and get off the cross."

"The cross." Spock peered at him, but let it rest. They'd learned long ago that if they stopped the flow of conversation whenever one of them said something the other didn't understand, they wouldn't stay on subject for more than thirty seconds at a time.

"Ensign Chekov has a remarkably subtle understanding of physics and how it applies to technology. His knowledge surpasses my own in some areas. Helping him in the areas he is not so sure of, and assisting in his theories in the areas he masters, can only serve to my advantage. He is already leading a project with Commander Scott that has top Starfleet engineers taking notice."

McCoy thought about that. Shouldn't have been surprised, probably, but he was. "Something big?"

"Something important, yes. I assist them from time to time, but most of the work is theirs."

"So, you know the kid pretty well?" And now his face was heating up again. Jesus.

Spock blinked. "I know of his achievements in the Academy, and his work here on this ship. I am familiar with him as a student and a navigator. But I doubt that's what you're interested in."

"I'm not _interested_ in..." He trailed off, wondering why he was arguing. Why he couldn't get the blush off his face. "Okay, then as a tutor, or whatever you think of yourself as...do you think he's normal?"

Spock's eyebrow twitched.

McCoy nearly threw his fork across the table. "Stop that, I'm serious. I don't know how Vulcans handle their child prodigies, but I don't think earth has the first fucking clue what to do with them. And I wonder if he's really...safe, you know? Being here at his age, with the things he's been through."

Spock's eyebrow returned to neutral, and he considered those words. "He has given me no indication that he can't handle his duties here. If you ask me, doctor, though my opinion isn't professional, I believe Ensign Chekov has adjusted to life aboard this ship better than many of the crew."

"Yeah. It seems that way. But even that...that's a bad sign, Spock. You know what I'm saying? I don't like what it says about Chekov, or the people who raised him."

Spock frowned. "It's a particularly human trait to express such distrust of anything different, even when that difference is favorable. You believe that someone of Ensign Chekov's age shouldn't be suited to this ship, so you would ignore that for the ten months he has been part of the crew he has never shown a sign of being ill-suited."

McCoy shook his head, wondering how to explain his strange, conflicting thoughts about the kid. "It's not normal. That's all, it's just not normal. And even if he's abnormal in a favorable way, that doesn't make it okay."

"Perhaps, perhaps not." Spock met his eyes, his gaze steady. "Then again, Leonard, due to the very fact of his youth Ensign Chekov has worked extremely hard to get where he is. He has for nearly a year proven himself as an exemplary officer and valuable crew member. So it doesn't seem valid or...or _fair, _to use a word you love so much, to doubt him simply because you disapprove of the fact of him."

McCoy was surprised at that, but he credited Spock enough not to instantly argue. He tossed his own words around in his head, and saw how Spock might interpret them. "I don't disapprove of him," he said after a minute. "I don't doubt him, even. I just get pissed off, thinking about how he must have come to be here. I just think he could probably use a break." He hesitated, wry. "Or a childhood."

Spock sat back, amusement starting to angle his eyebrows again. "A human childhood, you mean. From what I know of him, his upbringing can't have been much different from my own."

McCoy snorted, but figured he was wasting his breath trying to make Spock understand thoughts he didn't quite understand himself.

"Yeah, maybe that's what scares me. All we need is two yous on this ship."

* * *

It was probably stupid to think about it. He'd never noticed Chekov in any real way before Bauer. He'd thought of the kid as odd, and young, and all that. But he hadn't thought of him as troubling.

He'd been seventeen from the start, and that hadn't ever troubled McCoy the way it did now that he knew more about the kid.

He noticed Chekov more suddenly. When he went up to the bridge, summoned by Jim or just nosy like normal, he found his eyes going to the back of that curly-haired head, watching his hands move surely over the navigational displays. Listening to him and Sulu talk during the quiet minutes, or exchange theories with Kirk and Spock when readying for a mission.

Chekov was the navigator, and a good one, and that was it. He wasn't slow to join in exchanges with the older officers, he wasn't pandered to or patronized by anyone on the bridge.

Sometimes his youth showed, but always on their off hours. When McCoy sat in the mess with Jim and Spock and Scotty – Jim had this rule about officers eating with the crew at least a couple of nights a week, something about fostering relationships or whatever; McCoy thought Jim just liked hanging around a lunchroom like he was back in school – he would look over to where Chekov sat.

Always with Sulu and Uhura, usually with a few more people around. Always talking, laughing. Chekov was red-faced more often than not, and McCoy got the feeling he was the subject of a lot of teasing.

Maybe half the time he showed up to meals with books in hand, or data padds, and Sulu and Uhura knew him enough to give him space to study.

Nothing out of the ordinary. He was fine. Functional and productive, and by all appearances happy.

Still, no matter how often McCoy told himself that, he couldn't keep his focus from wandering to the kid.

* * *

He took the book to the mess one night, and handed it back to Chekov as the kid came in to eat. He flashed a grin, trying not to show any sign of reluctance.

Chekov had a slim padd under his arm – no doubt some overly complicated quantum physics or dark matter research or whatever the kid considered to be light dinner reading.

He took the book with a smile, reverent fingertips brushing the cover. "Thank you, doctor."

"You've had that for a while, haven't you?" McCoy hadn't for a moment missed the well-worn, well-loved aspects of that book, and he got confirmation how important that book was just watching Chekov handle it.

Chekov nodded, glancing back when Sulu and Uhura moved around them with their trays. "Since I was too young to read it," he confessed with a smile. "It was my mother's."

Dead, McCoy had read in the kid's records. Mom died when he was barely six. He flashed a grin, since he wasn't really supposed to be keeping tabs on Chekov that way. But he felt a pang at holding the book for so long.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat. "You, uh. I owe you one now, so come by sometime and I'll lend you some Faulkner."

Chekov smiled, bright and clear and wide. "Thank you, I will."

McCoy went over to his abandoned tray and Jim's still-going anecdote about some fight he'd had in an LA bar on a weekend trip away from the Academy. Damned fight had taken thirty seconds in real life, and the story didn't clock in at under half an hour the way he'd built it up through the years.

He felt eyes on him as he went, and he glanced over to see Sulu watching him with his placid expression and dark eyes.

McCoy nodded his way. Sulu waved and went back to his food.

Once or twice through his meal and Jim's endless story, McCoy glanced over at the three of them, Chekov and Sulu and Uhura.

When he saw that Chekov had ignored his data padd and was browsing through Yevtushenko while he ate, he smiled to himself.

* * *

Chekov came for Faulkner, and brought a small platter with him. A dessert, he explained with a shy grin. Something his grandmother made just enough times that he thought he could duplicate it himself.

Wasn't like he couldn't invite the kid in after that, really, and McCoy set the platter on the table and pulled out some silverware trying to act like he knew how to be a host. Chekov sent about six different cups of tea from the replimat straight into the recycler before it finally succumbed to his whiz-kid programing and gave him what he was looking for.

Strong enough that McCoy didn't miss coffee, way too sweet, but it wasn't bad. The dessert was this layered thing with almonds and flaky pastry and marscapone cheese, maybe, though McCoy wasn't exactly a gourmet. Damned good, though.

They talked a little about home. Chekov talked wistfully about snow drifts in winter that could block the windows of his family's home in Izhevsk. McCoy made him laugh in turn talking about how three inches of snow in Georgia could paralyze the populace, because it was so damned rare a thing no one knew how to handle it.

Chekov talked about his grandmother's cooking – he had yet to mention his dad, but McCoy didn't pry – and McCoy surprised himself by recounting a few memories of Eunice McCoy, matriarch of the McCoy clan when he was a kid. Tough woman; she buried three husbands before the fourth one buried her.

He hadn't thought about her in years.

It was strange, and it was relaxing as all hell putting himself back into the fresh air during family reunions, under pecan trees and the Georgia sun.

When Chekov left, McCoy made him solemnly promise to return their next free evening for a heaping bowl of banana pudding with vanilla cookies. Alone McCoy polished off way too much of that sweet, rich Russian dessert and had the computer pipe in some old Johnny Cash tunes, just for the hell of it.

* * *

"You have a daughter?"

McCoy couldn't help a laugh at the utter bafflement on Chekov's face. "Why? Do I look like a guy whose sperm doesn't work?"

Chekov's nose scrunched, his mouth curling down. "Doctor."

McCoy's laughter only got louder. "You sound like Spock! Jesus, kid, you're too damned young to disapprove of things like that."

"I was only surprised because I didn't know," Chekov answered, almost prim, giving McCoy a dark look and sticking out his empty bowl.

"More?" McCoy was still chuckling as he scraped the dregs of the chicken and dumplings into the kid's bowl. "She's gonna be fifteen in April. Sometimes my ex-father-in-law sends me updates. I guess she's talking about being a vet, or was a few months ago."

"An animal doctor?" Chekov's sternness faded into a smile. "Like her father, then, a little bit."

McCoy handed his bowl back out. "Hopefully that stays a pretty accurate description of her. I wouldn't want the poor kid growing up to be like me, but...a little bit wouldn't be bad."

Chekov regarded him for a moment over the steaming bowl of chicken broth and soft, fragrant dumplings. "Perhaps you don't give yourself enough credit."

"Yeah, maybe, but don't bet on it. You just don't know me that well yet, kid."

"With all due respect, doctor," Chekov hesitated, looking at his bowl. "I don't know this Jocelyn woman at all, but it doesn't stop me from thinking that if your daughter grows up more like you it would be the best thing for her."

McCoy's grin faded. He eyed the kid.

Chekov blushed but looked back. "I guess you loved her?"

"Yeah." He shrugged – the kid was a kid, what did he knew about the complications that came with talking about a woman like Jocelyn? A woman he had loved and then hated and then just mourned.

"Not fair to judge her just by what I say, though, you know?" He sighed, sitting back and grabbing his bourbon.

"Doctor, I am a genius, remember?" Chekov met his eyes before looking away again. "I am more than capable of judging her by the few deeds I know that she's done."

McCoy rolled his eyes, but didn't protest. Hell, he didn't talk about Jocelyn much with anyone, it wasn't a horrible thing to have someone take his side, even if he didn't know the details.

Anyway, Chekov really was a smart kid, so there wasn't any use arguing.

Funny the things they were leaning about each other during brief talks and shared snacks. Funny how suddenly McCoy knew that Chekov would never mention the word 'genius' when talking about his own work on the ship, but would throw it around dismissively when he talked about his past, or use it as a way to get his opinion taken seriously.

He always said it like he was quoting someone else's words.

And McCoy realized later that it had been years since he had actually laughed with someone while talking about his far-away baby girl.

* * *

He'd never been scared to spend time alone.

He didn't make friends easily. Never had. He rarely sought for approval from strangers, he thought most ways people socialized were idiotic wastes of time. McCoy liked a beer and a bourbon, but put him in a smoky bar shouting over too-loud music, pushing his way through drunk strangers, paying ten bucks a pop for a two dollar brew...

Forget it. He never was fond of crowds.

When he liked a person, he liked that person. Not people. If he wanted to have a drink with a pal he invited them over or whatever.

Used to piss Jocelyn off something fierce, the way he never wanted to go out and do things. He was happy watching midnight hit the clock on New Year's Eve sitting in his living room, soaking up the peace. He only liked to go to restaurants on week days, and would only go see movies once they'd been out for weeks and the theatre would be deserted.

But he was who he was. Never tried to deny it. He didn't hate people, but he didn't handle them well. He wasn't at ease with the madding crowd.

Jim was a social guy. Jim didn't like silence. He liked stimulation – in all its possible forms – and being the focus of attention. He liked small talk with strangers, and the crush of bodies in campus bars.

McCoy was too old for that crap. Even when he was young he was too damned old for it. And when Jocelyn got pissed enough to leave, and his friends all wanted to hit the bars, and McCoy said no? Well, McCoy was left on his own.

And he was fine with it.

He did good with silence. He liked getting lost in his own head – at least he used to, before his thoughts got all black and cynical and depressing. Even then, though, he preferred bourbon and silence to commotion and strangers.

So it was strange when he found himself looking to his door halfway through his evening bourbons. Listening for the chime, thinking over what he'd talk about if company showed up. Disappointed, a little, every time the silence won and the chime stayed muted.

Happy when it didn't.

Well. Maybe he was just lonely.


	5. Chapter 5

"It is a mystery to me," came the refreshingly embarrassment-free confession. "The whole thing. It's never been a part of...of _any_thing in my life, but it's so important to everyone else."

It seemed to annoy Chekov that there was something so basic that he didn't understand, which amused McCoy to no end. Not understanding things didn't sit well with geniuses, apparently.

"Never been a part? Come on, kid, you're young, but you're not that young."

Chekov just looked at him, open and unembarrassed. "I don't know if age has anything to do with it."

"So, what? You're a virgin?" McCoy wasn't able to hide his surprise as well as he intended.

The kid shot him a surprisingly cynical look. "Doctor, look at me. What else could I be?"

McCoy laughed at that. "You're a good looking kid with a brain the size of Pluto and a weird Russian sense of humor. Seems to me you could be a lot of things."

Chekov smiled faintly and lofted his mug of tea as if in toast. "You're polite to say so, but too smart to think it's that easy. Everyone I have ever known regards me as a child."

McCoy shrugged, taking a mouthful of grits to stall his answer a few seconds. "Okay," he said finally once he swallowed, "you can't tell me no one's ever expressed an interest in you, child or not. You're just too..."

...too damned cute, with those big eyes and that curly hair and all that brilliance. But Jesus, Len, talk about an inappropriate thing for a doctor to say to a kid like Chekov.

Chekov's smile vanished. He regarded McCoy over the mug of tea. The silence was suddenly heavy.

McCoy blinked, thinking about what he'd said.

Almost instantly he realized his mistake. He felt his face heat. "Shit, kid, I don't mean..."

"But that is the answer," Chekov replied, quiet. His eyes went down to study his empty plate. "Some have expressed interest."

Fucking idiot thoughtless _bastard_. McCoy sighed to himself, annoyed. "Seems like a good time for an awkward subject change."

Chekov's shoulders rose and fell, a strangely lazy shrug for the kid. "Do you remember when I told you about..."

"Hard to forget something like that, Pavel."

"I only told you because..." He frowned up at McCoy, uncertain. "I don't break, doctor. Not over something like that. But, my age...people always watch me during unhappy times, waiting for the cracks to form. I wanted you to understand that I didn't plan to crack, not over Bauer."

McCoy flashed a wan smile, and at least he could answer honestly. "I know you better than that now. I won't check you for breaks, kid."

Chekov nodded, but didn't seem very appeased. He sat up suddenly, regarding McCoy as if checking _him _for cracks.

"When I was twelve, the man assigned to take me around the university in St. Petersburg ended up being shipped to Siberia, to prison. Because even at twelve I fought back, and I didn't stay silent afterwards. He was an adult, the assistant to one of the Physics professors. He was big, and he...he had his fingers..." He hesitated, blushing, but went on anyway. "You know. Inside of me. Before I managed to get away."

"Damn it, kid. I didn't..." McCoy dropped his spoon, sitting back in his chair and grabbing what was left of his coffee.

"At the academy it was another student, a senior I was tutoring." Chekov smiled, faint. "I was barely fifteen, and he despised me for the lessons. He managed to get his hand down my pants, telling me to be quiet and good and maybe we'd get along after all. I ruptured his testicle," he went on matter-of-factly, "because the first doctor in St. Petersburg, a woman I think you would have liked very much, made me swear that if it ever happened again I would fight dirty. '_Pojdite dlja paha, _Pasha_.'_" He grinned. "Go for the groin."

McCoy smiled, small and tight.

"And now Bauer. I have ended his career."

"He ended his own career, Pavel."

Chekov nodded. "He did. And I did. He said...he acted as if..." He hesitated then, fingers curling around the tea in his hands, watching the steam as if it would give him his next line. "'Come on, Pavel, you've been teasing me for weeks now. Don't act like you don't want this.'"

It was harsh, low, just flattened enough that Chekov was trying to imitate an American accent. It made McCoy's spine stiffen, made his knuckles go white around his coffee.

Chekov drew in a breath and sighed. "_That_ is what I don't understand about the whole thing," he said finally. "He believed I had been asking for...for that. Flirting. Doctor, I don't even know what flirting _is._ How do I know I don't do it?"

McCoy frowned to himself. He remembered pretty clearly Bauer's lame answers when Kirk demanded an explanation. 'It was nothing the kid didn't want' or something like that.

And hell. Now that he was spending some real time with Chekov he almost understood the misunderstanding.

Chekov was always so damned _intent_, fascinated, just listening to people talk. Those eyes of his all but sparkled when he was absorbed in conversation. He had that Russian disregard of personal space. When he was amused by something he laughed in a private kind of way, like anything funny was a secret he was sharing only with the person he was speaking to.

Sharing meals, reciting poetry? If McCoy wasn't such a jaded old bastard he might have thought the kid was flirting with _him_ a little bit.

Hell, if he didn't know better he'd say he was flirting back.

"If he really thought you were teasing him," he said finally, his voice rough, "or flirting, or asking for it, then the first time you said no should have clued him in otherwise. Even if you were deliberately flirting with the guy, 'no' is the god damned final answer. And I know you well enough by now to know that you said no pretty damned bluntly when he started going too far."

"I did." Chekov looked up at that, eyes intent on McCoy to make sure he believed the answer. "I pushed him away. I even told him, when he wouldn't stop, what I would do. I told him I would bite."

"That's your absolution, kid. Whatever he heard when you said no, that's on him. And hell, if he couldn't even figure out what a solid, blunt 'no' meant then you sure don't have to blame yourself for whatever he thought he heard the weeks before that, when he thought you were flirting."

Chekov sipped his tea, eyes distant in that way that meant he was thinking things over.

McCoy took advantage of the pause to study the kid. He did look better – no more smears of darkness under his eyes. He was sleeping again.

He'd talked to his friends, McCoy knew. He could tell when it happened, because for a couple of days Sulu was odd and careful with his young pal, and Nyota walked around with this sadness in her eyes as if she'd never before considered that anyone could ever hurt anyone else.

But that had gone away slowly, which hopefully meant that Chekov had shown then what he wanted to prove to McCoy – that he wasn't about to break, and they could stop waiting for it to happen.

McCoy figured he had his nose in Chekov's business enough without asking questions, though. Besides, they hadn't talked about Bauer since the night it happened. They talked about food and weather and home, or compared notes on the crew around them. They just talked, the kind of random, weird, interesting talk people.

Asking him about Bauer, about the men who'd tried before Bauer, seemed like a step back.

He'd invited the kid for a real southern breakfast - scrambled eggs and cheese, grits and hashbrowns the way he used to cook on lazy Sunday mornings. He didn't invite him over planning to have a chat about the birds and the bees, and sure didn't mean to make Chekov talk about a history peppered with unwanted touches.

"It's a joke, isn't it?" the kid asked finally, setting his tea down and reaching forward to take a spare piece of toast from McCoy's plate.

"Hey." McCoy slapped at his hand, but didn't take the toast back. "I forgot how much teenagers eat, Jesus. What's a joke?"

Chekov rolled his eyes at the word 'teenagers' but sat back and started to carefully pry the crust from the edges of the bread. "Being a tease. A flirt. Hinting interest and then not...not being willing when the time comes. I've heard people mock each other for it for years now. It's not unheard of, what Bauer thought."

McCoy chuckled, though there wasn't much humor in the sound. "He's a testosterone-soaked male, Pavel. He could've deluded himself that anyone in the world was interested in him. Men are idiots that way. Hell, if he were interested in tall-and-emotionally-distant instead of short-and-excitable-and-innocent I bet he could've convinced himself that _Spock_ wanted him."

Chekov blinked, then laughed. Quiet, muffled, like kids sharing secrets with a teacher standing too close. "I am not short!" he protested through his laughter. "And Spock isn't emotionally distant."

"I'll give you one of those two things," McCoy retorted, pushing away from the table to get himself some fresh coffee from the small kitchen crammed into the side of his quarters like an afterthought.

"He isn't," Chekov insisted, voice carrying easily. "He's not demonstrative, but he's very much in touch with his emotions."

"Yeah?" McCoy glanced back, looking at Chekov's profile as he started neatly eating the crust from the toast.

"He's never said as much, but..." Chekov looked over, catching McCoy's staring eyes.

McCoy turned away fast, and wondered exactly why his face was heating up.

"But," he went on after a beat, "it's a simple matter of Vulcan physiology, and factoring in that Spock is half-human. Human nature is a hard thing to push away, and an impossible thing to simply turn off. What he feels and what he allows himself to show are entirely different things."

"Yeah, maybe," McCoy poured his coffee and turned, leaning back against the narrow counter top. "But he's a friend, not a research project, so I guess I don't think in those terms."

Chekov shot him a grin, finishing off the crust and tearing the toast in two jagged halves. "Everything is a research project to me, doctor. Life is a research project. Otherwise I would get far too bored." He sat back, contemplating the toast. "I suppose that's why I keep turning this thing with Bauer around in my mind, trying to make sense of it. Because it was different than the other times this has happened, in small ways but important ones."

McCoy moved back to the table slowly. "Sometimes there's no sense to be made, Pavel. Hate to sound pandering, but sometimes bad things just happen."

"There is always causality, doctor. Even if part of the chain of causality is something that can't be made sense of, the chain itself is always detectable."

"Sounds suspiciously like philosophical sentiment."

Pavel laughed. "Just the opposite. It's solid physics. Energy isn't ever _created_, doctor – potential or kinetic, it builds from a source. Nothing is completely spontaneous."

"Uh huh." McCoy studied him, wondering if these were the kinds of thoughts that helped Pavel deal with the shit he'd gone through. "So...this thing with Bauer...?"

"There is a chain from him and a chain from me." Chekov shrugged. "It would begin with both of our childhoods. My inability to adjust myself to standard educational settings. My lack of basic social education, which could be traced further back to my parents, and the land I was raised in. For him...whatever made him so eager to take control over a smaller person would begin with childhood as well. I could speculate, but there isn't much point."

McCoy found himself leaning in, listening. Could have been nonsense, of course, but it was interesting. The scientific side to dissecting a traumatic memory.

Chekov went on, careful and slow as if giving a verbal paper to a professor. "But the more immediate links are obvious: I am resented by other navigators on this ship for my age, and for being placed on Captain Kirk's alpha crew. I wished to make friends with those navigators, because my lack of social experience doesn't change my desire for social experience." He smiled, faint and sheepish.

McCoy ached a little for him, though he tried not to show it.

"I pretended to need advice from Bauer, because I wished to make others think I don't truly know more than they do. Bauer encouraged our conversations, probably due to a desire to find something to use against me later. He never did like my company. I've got no talent for conversation, and we were very different people."

McCoy watched him as he spoke, the bright eyes and thoughtful voice that said to McCoy that this really was a form of research for the kid.

Not nonsense, then, if only because it wasn't nonsense to Pavel himself.

"I assume that he subconsciously subverted his intentions, and my intentions, until he believed I had some sort of...crush, or whatever he might call it. Because he is a male in his twenties with no relationship ties and no affection for me personally, he went for the most preferable outcome of this imagined crush – sexual release. Whether he prefers, as you said, 'short and excitable and...' what was it?"

McCoy blinked when those wide green eyes landed on him. He hesitated. "Innocent."

"Yes." Chekov smiled faintly. "Innocent. Whether he really finds those things appealing or simply doesn't find them repulsive, he thought to initiate sex. And I, who am inexperienced enough that sex was never a factor in my thinking, didn't know to suspect it was coming."

His smile seemed suddenly more sharp, but more sincere. "Of course, since I have had similar dealings in the past, my reaction was stronger than he expected. So he is now heading for dishonorable discharge, perhaps prison. And I am left here to wonder about attraction and sex. These utterly incomprehensible things that comes so easily to most people."

"Hey, let's nip that little mistake right in the bud, Pavel. What Bauer tried to do has nothing to do with attraction and sex."

Chekov hummed a noncommittal response. "Rape is about power. Yes, I've read countless studies. But he didn't want rape. This is what was so different about him, compared to the other times something like this has happened to me. He was willing to settle for rape in the end, but he didn't set out to attack a person he knew would say no. He genuinely believed I wanted him. And I don't know how to want anybody."

"Yeah?" McCoy wasn't sure how to begin answering Chekov's theories. He hadn't been there to know what Bauer had tried, or how he came across. He did doubt that Bauer was ever that sure of getting Pavel's consent. Normal people didn't go from seduction to rape without batting an eye.

Still, he didn't know, and Pavel wasn't the kind of guy who wanted token arguments.

So he sighed and left Bauer alone, focusing on the last of Pavel's glum words. "You don't know how? I doubt that."

Chekov looked at him in some surprise. "Do you?"

"Wanting someone isn't a thing you're taught, genius." He sat down finally across from Chekov, flashing a small smile that wanted to be more cheerful than it felt. "You said it yourself – human nature can't be turned off. Attraction fulfills some kind of genetic imperative, right? It's a basic biological function."

"So for the survival of my species, I might biologically be attracted to someone some day?" Chekov laughed, soft and sad. "Then again, there are exceptions even to basic nature. It's a rare percentage of people who have been shown to be truly asexual, but they exist."

"And you think that's what you are?" McCoy shook his head, smiling with just a little twist of bitterness.

Some day he was going to track down everyone who had a hand in raising and teaching little Pavel Chekov, and he was going to fucking smack them.

"Look, kid. You can dismiss the things that've happened to you, say they weren't traumatic because you managed to fight back. But you're a kid who was almost forced into sex before you were old enough to know what sex was, and that's gonna have an impact on your development."

"You believe I am simply undeveloped? Immature?" Chekov returned the wry smile. "My very closest friends on this ship are Nyota, a beautiful, caring woman, and Hikaru, a handsome, talented man who is for all intents my partner on the bridge and off. I am closer to them than I have ever been to anyone. Wouldn't I feel something for one of them if I were capable of feeling something for anyone?"

McCoy laughed. "You're too smart to be seriously asking that question. Jim Kirk's my closest friend, and he's considered by most women and a lot of men I've talked to to be the sexiest guy ever to sit in a captain's chair. But I'd laugh him out of bed if he ever came on to me. That doesn't mean anything about me, just about me and Jim together."

"Perhaps you don't like men."

"Got a few stories from my past that would shoot that theory down fast."

Chekov frowned.

McCoy studied him, feeling a twist of sympathy. His patience for self-pity was limited at the best of times, but Chekov didn't seem to be the type to deliberately wallow. Kirk might announce his intentions to enter a monastery every time some one-night-stand went south, but Chekov wasn't dramatic that way.

Chekov wouldn't announce himself asexual unless he thought it was true, and the kid just didn't have the kind of normal, average experiences that would help him know better.

Chekov was too old, too self-aware, too calm in his own skin. But he was young and damaged all the same, and it bothered the holy hell out of McCoy.

He reached out, lay his hand on the kid's arm gently. "You're young. I know, you hear that a lot, but in this case it's a good thing. You're young enough to not be interested in anyone without it being abnormal. You're young enough to take the time to find yourself. You've got some baggage that might slow you down a bit, but..." He squeezed Chekov's arm. "If you give up, even in this one small way, you're letting those pricks who tried to hurt you win after all. So don't stop fighting back just because the immediate danger has passed, kid. Okay?"

Chekov looked down at McCoy's hand. His arm didn't tense, his expression didn't change. He just looked, like he was noting some curious phenomenon. "Perhaps you would do me a favor, doctor."

McCoy felt strangely sheepish the longer Chekov looked at his hand. He wasn't a man used to reaching out to anyone in a non-clinical way. But Chekov wasn't pulling back.

"What favor?"

Chekov drew in a breath and looked up again, eyes clear and thoughtful. "Perhaps you might not call me that so often. 'Kid', I mean."

"Bothers you?" McCoy drew his hand back as unobtrusively as possible.

"It is beginning to," Chekov answered honestly. He searched McCoy's face, something curious behind his eyes. "In Russia I would be Pasha to my friends. It is what Hikaru and Nyota call me, off-duty at least."

McCoy smiled then, still a little sheepish but warming up quickly. It felt like a favor he was being handed, and he accepted it a little too quickly. "Sure. I think I can handle that."

Chekov returned the smile. "In Russia you would be Leonid. Lyonya."

McCoy laughed. "In Georgia that would get my ass kicked."

He hesitated, but hell – he liked the kid. Pavel, Pasha, whatever he wanted to be called. He was stronger than he looked in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways he really needed someone to listen to him, to teach him things he never got a chance to learn.

So it was pretty easy for him to offer a gift in return.

"Len. It's what my friends back home used to call me, and Kirk's the only one I'll let get away with Bones – mostly because I don't really have a choice."

Chekov's eyes lit with the same happy energy he got when McCoy brought up that poet of his. "Len," he repeated in a tone that might have been solemn if it wasn't spoken through a smile. "Thank you, Len, I'm honored."

McCoy might have laughed at that, and told the kid not to be honored, it was just a nickname for Christ's sake.

But he didn't laugh.

It was hard to laugh in the face of sincerity that open. It was hard to remember any other time in his life where someone had treated his name like a gift. Like an honor.

He returned Chekov's smile and sipped his coffee and wondered inexplicably if there wasn't something about this whole thing that he was missing.

* * *

The answer came pretty quick. But not in any way McCoy was expecting.

It was another abrupt intrusion by Hikaru Sulu that started it. This time he wasn't dragging Pavel behind him, but was followed by another accomplice.

McCoy let them into his office – shift was close to being over, after all, and he'd cleaned up the day's disasters as best he could. Since they didn't look like they were bringing fresh disaster with them, he waved them in when he saw them.

"Hello, Doctor," came Uhura's soft greeting. Pretty voice, that one. He wondered idly if it seemed as pretty to the ears of aliens, when she so easily spoke their languages.

"Evening, you two." He grinned, but didn't fail to notice the hesitation surrounding the two of them. It wasn't hard to guess that they were there about their noticeably-absent third stooge.

But the actual reason wasn't anything like what he was expecting.

"Look, doc." Sulu, calm and solemn, pulled up a chair without waiting to be asked. "Pavel."

No shit, Pavel, he wanted to say, but he sat back and gestured Uhura towards the second chair. "As long as you both know I can't go giving out patient information."

"We know. It's not about that." Sulu did relax a little bit, though. "Reminds me, though, I did want to thank you for whatever you said to him that made him relax that damned Russian stubbornness. Now that he's told us what he was keeping to himself...well. Makes more sense that he didn't want to say anything, but..."

"But it's best for all of us that he did," Uhura picked up. "He has such a hard time trusting people, and if anything good came of this at all it's that he trusts us now. We're not scared of confronting ugly things on behalf of our friends."

"I know you're not," McCoy agreed easily enough. "I wouldn't have encouraged him to tell the truth if I thought it would hurt him in any way."

"Thanks for that," Sulu said with a quick grin that came and went in a flash. "But."

McCoy's eyebrows shot up.

"This is going to sound...horrible, doctor, so take it in the spirit it's intended," Uhura said hesitantly, sharing a glance with Sulu.

Curiosity pricked at McCoy, keeping him quiet despite his impatience with people who beat around bushes. What the hell could these two sweet little kids have to say to him that might sound horrible?

"Here's the thing." Sulu cleared his throat, sitting up in his chair like he was making some official report. "You know he can trust us with his secrets. But we don't know if we can trust you with him."

McCoy blinked. He blinked again.

Uhura picked up the thought fast, possibly noticing the shadows that must have been clouding behind McCoy's eyes. "Of course we trust you, doctor. We just aren't sure you quite know what you're getting into."

"I'm listening," he said, flat and impressively calm.

"Ever since that night with Bauer it's been Doctor McCoy this and Doctor McCoy that. I've heard more about the southern US in the last couple of weeks than I ever wanted to know. No offense, doc, but...I know what a grit is now, and that's just ridiculous."

McCoy's spine let go of some of its growing tension as confusion replaced anger.

Sulu sighed, abandoning the traces of levity he was trying to inject into things. "Whatever you said to him made an impact. More of an impact that you probably realize. Pavel..." He shared another glance with Uhura. "He's got this whole gap missing in his education, doc. I don't mean school, I mean basic life education."

McCoy almost barked out that he already knew all this, but something kept him silent. Best see just what they were getting at first.

"He's the smartest kid I have ever met," Sulu went on, checking McCoy's expression between words. "No, the smartest person, kid or not. But sometimes he'll come out with some question, like...like what's it like to hold someone's hand, or something random like that, that just shows how little he knows about some things."

"Get to the point," McCoy said, giving in to his impatience.

Uhura leaned in, solemn. "The point is, doctor, that Pavel has no idea what it feels like to have a crush on someone. Even when he's right in the middle of one."

McCoy scowled at Uhura, something twisting in his gut a little bit. "You think he has a crush on me."

"There's not much doubt at this point, doc." Sulu's fingers drummed absently on his leg, but his gaze stayed serious on McCoy's face. "And frankly, it seems like you're encouraging it. You may not understand just how badly something like this—"

"Okay, that's enough. Jesus." McCoy stood up, moving around his desk and to the door. He used the movement as a stall, but when he turned back to them he still had no clue where to even start addressing something like that.

"First of all, the kid needed help in a bad time and I was the one he got stuck with. If I did a good job and helped him get back some kind of happiness, good for me. Don't mistake gratitude for some crush. And don't damn well accuse me of encouraging it, when I knew before you two did just how many times he's been taken advantage of by someone he should have been able to trust."

"Doctor..."

"Nope. Talk's over." He backed up a step to make the door open, and gestured out into sickbay towards the doors. "Go. I don't have time for this crap right now."

Sulu sighed but stood. Uhura moved more slowly, looking from McCoy to Sulu as if she expected one of them to strike at any moment.

McCoy wasn't in the mood to strike. He was pissed, sure, but he wasn't so rash that he didn't see all this was born from their concern for Pavel. He wouldn't attack them for being good friends to the kid, but he also wouldn't let them attack him for the same damned thing.

"It's fine if you don't believe us, doc," Sulu said as he moved past McCoy to the door. "Just be careful."

Uhura moved past him silently, her gaze on Sulu's back.

McCoy turned to go back to his desk, but a moment after the door slid closed it opened again.

Uhura regarded him from the doorway when he looked back. "You know, doctor...Pavel will be eighteen in another month."

McCoy felt heat rising to his face, and chose to believe it was anger. "I'll send him a card."

"He's been sheltered, but he isn't a child. I don't know what Hikaru thinks, but me? I just wanted to make sure you knew how complicated someone like Pavel is. If he does have a crush, and you did encourage it..." She smiled. "That isn't a bad thing. You're a good man. He deserves someone good."

McCoy stared at her, lowering himself slowly into his seat.

She was gone a moment later, but he caught himself still gaping at the door, still trapped by the strangest uncertain kind of shock, when his chime sounded the end of his shift.

* * *

Seems like you're encouraging him, doc. Don't know what you're getting into, doc. You're a good man, he deserves someone good.

Christ on a _pony_. He'd been he target of gossip for months in Georgia, during the divorce and after. He'd been called come malicious things by people who should have known better.

But he hadn't ever been rocked like that.

They thought – and these weren't two strangers, two idiots, these were bright officers who knew him, damn it – they thought he was encouraging a troubled little _kid _to have some crush on him.

Fucking ridiculous.

What, did they think he was so hard up for attention that he'd try to manipulate a _patient_ into wanting him? What the fuck kind of doctor did they take him for?

Sure, he spent a lot of time with Pavel. Whatever. They were all friends on that ship, they were the A shift on the god damned Enterprise, they were practically family. He liked Pavel, damn it. He thought the kid was pretty damned strong considering what he'd gone through. He figured Chekov's brain was an impressive thing, and okay, he was a good looking kid.

But...come on.

McCoy had an overdeveloped sense of guilt at the best of times. If he for a minute thought he was actually trying to encourage Pavel to feel something for him, he'd never stop hating himself for it.

How could they not see that? How could they seriously doubt they could trust McCoy with Pavel?

The longer he thought about it, the more he was sure there was nothing to it. A couple of paranoid kids with good intentions who were worried about their friend.

But then...he couldn't stop thinking about it. Even after he told himself with all the confidence in the world that they were insane and off-base, he still couldn't get Chekov's blushing cheeks and whispered "s_pasiba, iscelitel'" _out of his mind.

Which didn't mean anything, damn it. It meant someone sat him down and told him not to think about pink fucking elephants, and now he couldn't think of anything else.

That's all it was.

Damn it.

Of course, if he avoided Pavel for a few days after that, well. That shouldn't have surprised anyone.

He went by Spock's quarters more often than usual, and went to hang around with Jim in the mess, and sometimes he just sat in his quarters with his bourbon the way he always had before.

Wondering why it felt quiet and heavy and lifeless in there when it was just him.

He didn't miss the kid or their weird talks. He just missed company.

Then again, he wondered if he wasn't proving Sulu and Uhura right somehow, because the one time his door chime buzzed and he just _knew _it was Pavel with his big grin and some weird herring dish or something, he didn't answer it even to tell the kid to get lost. Because if he answered it he knew he'd let the kid in, and he knew they'd spend a few hours talking about being homesick or what medical school was like or why Pavel took up running in school when he was the first to admit he hated sweating.

Or whatever. Something. It'd go on for a long time and McCoy would laugh too much, and he'd catch himself looking at the kid too closely, and...it wasn't right.

Fuck Sulu and Uhura and their stupid concern.


	6. Chapter 6

Small starship, though, and since he wasn't actively avoiding the kid of course they saw each other. He even smiled when he saw Pavel, waved, maybe grinned to himself for a while after.

He was still the doctor, and a starship had a surprising amount of line of duty injuries even when they were just traveling.

So.

"Doctor, hello!" The kid's accent was so thick it took McCoy a minute to understand the greeting when he walked into sickbay one day.

But he grinned like normal when he saw Chekov, and it only faded a little when he took in that Pavel was sitting on a cot, being hummed at by machines. "What's going on, kid?"

"I am not a kid," Pavel answered instantly, as if reporting one of his genius factoids. "I am a _navigator_."

Christine walked by him with a broad smile. "Scotty got him drunk."

"What?" McCoy's eyes shot back to Pavel, the blinking eyes and red cheeks. He almost laughed, though he probably should have been shocked or something.

She nodded at the bed beside Pavel, where Scotty lay snoring with a bandaged hand. "Tell him the story, Mr. Chekov."

"The auxiliary transporter attacked us," Pavel reported dutifully with a sudden frown. He held out his arms as McCoy approached, showing lines of angry red up the pale insides of his wrists. "I think it did not like to be gutted."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't either if I were it."

Pavel giggled.

McCoy rolled his eyes but grabbed the kid's wrist and took in those wounds. Superficial but painful. "So how did you get drunk?"

"I'm not drunk. Mr. Scott had to untangle some wiring...and put out a fire – a small fire – before he could get me up here. But it hurt while I was waiting, and he said a swallow of whiskey would make the pain matter less. A pan...a..." Pavel blinked, overly-serious. "_English_. A panacea."

He laughed suddenly. "It's Greek. That word. Panacea. She was a goddess of healing. I was thinking of it as English."

"Uh huh." McCoy glanced back and exchanged smiles with Christine. "Okay then, let's get this bandaged and get you back to your room to sober up."

"I am not drunk," Chekov protested with real heat. "I have been drunk and it was nothing like this. Do you have to bandage me? It isn't bleeding."

"We could run the regenerator over you, but you'd likely be fine by morning either way."

"Whatever you think is best, doctor." Chekov smiled suddenly, sweet.

"Regenerator it is, then." He lifted Pavel's pale arm, though, squinting at the marks. Not burns, not blisters. "Those wires Scotty had to untangle weren't wrapped around you by any chance, were they?"

Pavel nodded, his eyes huge and solemn just like that. "Because I fell. It wasn't his fault, he was busy with the fire."

"Jesus," McCoy scowled over at Scotty, quietly snoring on the next bed. "What the hell are you two playing with down there, anyway?"

"It's serious work." Pavel thrust his arm out, as if to prove his words. As if to show he wouldn't injure himself for anything less than science.

McCoy rolled his eyes but smiled to himself and let Scotty snore on. He regarded Pavel's slender arm. "Any numbness? Any sharp pains?" His hands slipped up the lines of marks, applying faint, careful pressure to his arm as he went.

"No thank you." Pavel answered. "Just the regenerator will be fine."

McCoy chuckled. "Brat."

"Doctor?" the kid asked suddenly, his eyes wide and bright – not drunk, as he'd argued, but not dead sober and probably a little shocky. "Do you know something strange?"

"Well, I know you, kid." McCoy reached for the dermal generator with a crooked smile that felt annoyingly fond.

Pavel giggled, but blinked and was serious again. "I don't usually like it when people touch me. Hikaru and Nyota are okay, but not anyone else." He looked at his arm, at McCoy's hand. "But I hardly notice when it's you. Is that strange? That I don't mind when you touch me?"

McCoy released his wrist like he was the one burning that red into Chekov. He backed up a step and forced a grin and didn't look at anyone. "Shouldn't ramble when you're drunk, kid. People love to gossip."

Pavel just smiled, still holding his arm straight out as if in invitation.

* * *

And...okay. It wasn't like McCoy went _dead_ after the divorce. He was a man, a still-relatively-young man who was coming out of a relationship that had been ice-cold for a long time.

Jocelyn said during the trial that she suspected him of cheating. He didn't. Didn't even consider it seriously. But after the divorce he had his rebound spell. Especially once he got to San Francisco, to the Academy, to a place where he didn't know someone's name in every bar.

He didn't do it often – he wasn't Jim Kirk, even when he was on the rebound. But there had been a couple of women, sweet girls who smiled at him the way Jocelyn hadn't smiled at him in years. And a couple of guys, good-looking and fun and matter-of-fact about what they wanted.

McCoy didn't take it seriously, because he wasn't ever doing that to himself again. But he made a couple of friends out of it, had a few nice evenings, and got Jim off his back about being a bitter hermit.

Now that he was away from the academy and far enough removed from the divorce, he caught his eyes wandering now and then. Chris Chapel...Jesus. She was smart as a whip, and there was nothing McCoy liked more than a nurse who wouldn't take his crap.

But she was too good a nurse, and he had no interest in losing her or their relationship in sickbay to some affair, even if he did catch her returning his speculative looks now and then.

There was no denying that Uhura was gorgeous, and God but McCoy could use someone that truly kind in his life. Luckily she was taken, and as little as McCoy understood her being with Spock, he respected the hell out of it.

He'd looked at Sulu once or twice: he was attractive, he was smart. He was calm, too, centered in a way that would probably do someone like McCoy some good. But there wasn't any real spark there, and McCoy wasn't gonna mess with anyone on Kirk's main crew for anything as basic as attraction.

There was a guy in Engineering who'd been interested in him, once. Jake...something Polish. A Lieutenant who'd nearly cut his hand off at the wrist helping Scotty on one of his endless refit missions.

McCoy'd had to work with him a while to get his hand back into shape – modern medicine could knit the flesh and arteries and veins all back together almost perfectly, but engineers handled the most impossibly delicate tools in the most cramped settings, and making sure he was left without tremors or numbness in his hand took a bit of therapy.

McCoy got to know Jake pretty well, and he was a good-looking guy. There were enough smiles and enough personal tidbits thrown into their conversations for McCoy to think he was interested.

But come to find out during their talks that Jake had already spent a night with Jim.

And that was that.

Jim laughed at him when he told the story later. Said that if McCoy was going to rule out anyone who'd been with Jim he was going to run out of options sooner or later.

McCoy didn't really mind either way. He looked, yeah, and sometimes he thought about it. Sometimes he got damned sick of his own hand. But that was a distant thing, really. So he was lonely, so what? A lot of people got lonely. He wasn't miserable with it.

And now...

Now suddenly he was spending a good bit of his time with someone new. Well, not new, but someone who had never entered his mind in the context of attraction.

McCoy was enjoying it. The talks, the energy Pavel brought in with him. The getting to know someone new. But that didn't mean a damned thing. There wasn't anything sordid about it, for Christ's sake.

When he first caught himself wondering about Chekov in any kind of sexual way – and of course he wondered, they'd had long conversations about the subject – the only thing he felt was dirty.

Chekov was a confused, hurt kid who was so unattracted to everyone around him that he thought he might be completely asexual. McCoy wasn't going to be one more in a distressingly long line of men who took his friendship and twisted it into something Pavel didn't want. McCoy wasn't the type to force himself on anyone. His opinion, sure. His medical advice, always. But he himself? Nope. Not his style.

Pavel was a handsome kid. Running marathons kept him fit as hell. He was all bright eyes and cheekbones and that ragged mop of curly hair, and those pale, graceful long-fingered hands.

Smart, smarter than anyone McCoy had ever met with the possible exception of Spock. Strong. Brave kid, determined. He had balls to come back from what he'd gone through for a third time now without letting it turn him bitter or cruel.

When McCoy first caught himself having thoughts about him, they were innocent thoughts.

He thought about how lucky someone was going to be when Pasha finally decided to give a relationship a try. Some sweet, smiling girl, or some playful, protective guy. Someone who'd see all the things McCoy saw in Chekov and realize how special they were.

Chekov might come to McCoy then to ask advice, to stammer out questions about bringing flowers on dates, or when a kiss was appropriate. McCoy would help. He'd tease the kid, but he'd also give the kind of advice he used to imagine giving his own daughter.

Chekov would have someone new to talk to about piroshky and Yevtushenko.

The more he thought about it, the less settled those thoughts became.

Would this mystery date, whoever it might be, understand the things about Pasha that were so important? Would they understand when the kid was nervous about sex? Would they accept his fear even if he didn't tell them the things about his past that he hated talking about?

They probably wouldn't like Yevtushenko. Not a lot of people read old earth poetry anymore. They wouldn't understand Chekov thinking so hard about everything, treating life like a research project to keep his brain from stagnating.

McCoy didn't even understand that, but he empathized and he accepted it. What if this mystery person wasn't decent enough to do even that much?

As much as he wanted to tell himself that Sulu and Uhura were idiots for thinking he'd take advantage of the kid, he felt some of that urge to protect that must have driven them. Once Pavel picked his sweet little girl or smiling guy, McCoy would be right there with Sulu and Uhura giving whoever it was the third degree about their intentions, and asking how much they knew about what they were getting in to.

It was when McCoy realized that he really _hated_ this guy or girl – this imaginary fucking person who didn't exist – that he began to think he was in some trouble.

* * *

He didn't even look at Jim, just cleared his throat and sat back in his chair and spoke casually. "Just out of curiosity...what exactly are the fraternization rules on your ship?"

Jim laughed so hard he seemed to be in pain.

For the rest of the damned night McCoy had to sit through random suggestions for Jim Kirk's Rules of Fraternization: 'yes, please' or 'as often as possible.' 'Captain gets first dibs.' 'You break it you bought it,' and God only knew what the giddy bastard meant by that.

McCoy didn't learn a thing except that he should probably never ask Jim another question about anything, ever.

* * *

"You said I should come to you," Chekov said the moment McCoy commanded the door to open, still trudging sleepily from the bedroom.

"Pavel." McCoy woke up fast – one of many instincts that came with being a doctor – and gestured the kid to come in without a pause.

Wasn't hard to miss the shaking hands, the wide, shadowed eyes, the remnants of fear. Nightmare, and it must have been a bad one to get Chekov willingly at his door asking for help.

McCoy ushered him in and hit the lock behind him. "Go on, take a seat. Want tea?"

"I..." Pavel looked up at him, eyes glittering with moisture. "I shouldn't...I'm..."

And...hell. McCoy didn't know if he just cared for Pavel as a patient, or a friend, or if he actually had the longings for something more. But one look at that bright, wounded gaze was enough to stir up heat in his gut. Real fire.

Bauer, some Russian kid in St. Petersburg, some Starfleet punk at the academy: whoever it was Pavel wanted him to kill right then, he'd've made it happen.

"Don't apologize," was all he said, gruff, gesturing towards the couch. "You want tea or not?"

"Yes. Thanks."

McCoy grunted and headed for the replimat. "You want that Ceylon you had for breakfast the other day?"

Hell, the other day. It had been almost a week since Sickbay. Almost two weeks total of avoiding the kid outside of work. For all the good it was doing him.

Pavel didn't answer, and McCoy braved a look back.

Chekov's eyes were on the wall, his focus clearly somewhere else.

McCoy pushed a few buttons and headed back to the couch with a cup of tea brewed way too strong and sweet, the way the kid had asked for last time, and a cup of black coffee.

Pavel looked over as he drew up to the couch, and took the mug with a nod of thanks. His hands were still shaking a little, but he managed to draw the cup to his chest without spilling anything.

McCoy took a seat next to him. "Was it Bauer?"

Chekov looked startled, but seemed to understand after a moment. "Hikaru," he answered softly.

That was a surprise. "Yeah?"

"Well..." Chekov considered it – never too scared to use his brain, that kid. "No, it was Bauer. But with Hikaru's face, and his voice." His knuckles were white from clutching the mug so tightly. "Saying I was asking for it, I was flirting. It was all my fault."

He unclenched from the mug enough to rub his hand across his eyes. His voice stayed steady. "I told him I didn't know what I'd done. I asked him to tell me. I begged him to...to stop, and to just_ tell_ me what I do that makes this keep happening to me."

God damn it. The kid needed a father. He needed a friend, someone he could rely on.

He didn't need Sulu and Uhura slinging insinuations, and McCoy being so stupid he was taking them seriously.

"He wouldn't tell me, though," Chekov said after a moment, sighing the words on a tired puff of air. "I wish someone would."

"Wish I could, Pasha. Someone would have to explain it to me first, though." He twisted to meet Chekov's sad eyes – he could still be the friend Chekov needed, damn it. He just had to push the rest aside.

"You're a good kid," he said. "A kid who deserves to have had a normal life, holding hands with spotty-faced girls and sneaking a first kiss, and all that other crap most of us don't have the sense to appreciate. You don't deserve this shit, okay? You didn't ask for it, you didn't do anything wrong."

There was nothing worse for a doctor than getting to a patient too late, and that's what this was. He was getting there too damned late, and no modern medical miracles existed that could cure this kind of internal damage.

Pavel was the last kid in the world who deserved this, and it pissed McCoy off something fierce. If he'd known a few weeks ago the things he knew now, he wouldn't have called security to pick Bauer's groaning heap of worthless flesh off his table. He would have handled business himself.

Nobody hurt Pasha, damn it. He just...he hadn't known that, when it mattered. He'd thought Pavel was just another person.

Chekov sat up finally, dragging McCoy out of his thoughts as he set the untouched tea down. "Sometimes I hear how I sound and know it's ridiculous. Sometimes I can tell myself that it's natural for victims to blame themselves, and it's groundless. I know I don't ask for this. There are simply bad people in the world, and I've had the unusual bad luck to meet more than one of them. It isn't anything deeper than that."

McCoy nodded. "Unfortunately there's a lot we know in our heads but can't make any other part of us accept."

"Do you know, doctor..."

"Len," McCoy reminded him quietly, before he thought about it and remembered that might not be such a good idea anymore.

But Chekov's eyes softened, and it was worth it. "Do you know, Len, when I have these dreams, or I stop myself from talking to someone new because I'm afraid of what they will see in my words that I don't intend...I get angry."

"Good. Anger's a good thing. It's more useful than depression or fear." McCoy leaned in before he could listen to that inner voice of his. He lay his hand on Chekov's arm, meeting his eyes seriously. "You get mad, Pasha. And let your friends get mad with you. Then, if anyone else in the fucking universe is dumb enough to try anything with you there'll be a whole crew of pissed-off people waiting to finish them once you've got them beat down." He grinned, feeling fierce. "We'd leave so many pieces of the sorry bastard, we'd make Yevtushenko proud."

Chekov laughed, small and watery. A surprised little sound. " _Neistovstvo._"

Fury. McCoy nodded. "Damn straight."

Chekov's hand appeared over McCoy's. Dry, warm weight, matching the calm, soft expression on his face as the last bits of dream-induced fear drained away.

"Len..." Pavel met his eyes, his voice tentative and warm and curling around that accent of his that McCoy hadn't realized was so...

Damn it.

"I'm running out of ways to thank you for what you keep doing for me."

He ought to have pulled his hand free from Pasha's grip. He ought to have backed off and answered like a doctor.

But he didn't. He didn't move the slightest bit. "A while back," he said, his voice low and jagged, "when Jim pissed you off so bad pulling you off your bridge shift to come talk to me. You thanked me nice and proper then, and that one still stands. So don't worry about it."

Chekov smiled, cheeks pinking, and McCoy knew he remembered that moment perfectly. Hell, sometimes McCoy thought he could still feel the exact shape of those innocent kisses on his cheeks.

He was already treading some dangerous ground on that couch, with that kid. Chekov, though, seemed intent on making it worse.

He leaned his face up and slipped in closer and echoed that first thanks, pressing a soft kiss to his right cheek, than his left, and murmuring right next to his ear, the way he had before, "_Spasiba, iscelitel'._"

Fuck. Dangerous. Red alert.

"What's it mean?" he asked, searching Chekov's clear green eyes for some sign, some hint either way. "I know 'thank you', but what's the other word? Doctor?"

"Healer." Chekov smiled. "More than a doctor."

McCoy braved a smile in return. "Flattery'll get you nowhere, kid."

"It's not, it's just how I see you. I knew from that first talk that I would never be scared of you. You make me feel safe, and that is more than any thank you in any language could repay."

Safe.

McCoy's smile twisted.

And. Yeah. That was more effective than an ice bath.

That was his sign. His hint. His blaring klaxon.

He pushed away from Chekov, extricating his arm and sitting carefully down on the far side of the couch.

"You're welcome, kid," he said, scratching at his cheek as if he could push away the imprint of those kisses. "Just doing my job."

* * *

Because, hell.

He made Chekov feel safe. _Safe_.

Given the situations that had made him feel less-than-safe lately, those words were a not so subtle slap to the face that leering over the kid was exactly the wrong thing to do.

And, Jesus. Leering because he thought the kid meant it? Because he thought the kid was flirting? What kind of blind bastard was he?

Chekov didn't know how to flirt. Chekov had no fucking idea what behavior qualified. Chekov wanted to know what he did that made all these men think he wanted them.

The way McCoy thought he might want him.

Jesus on a fucking pony, he deserved to be kicked off the ship. He deserved to share a cell with Bauer. He deserved to turn himself in to Sulu and Uhura as a lecherous shit who was capable of hurting their friend, and he deserved whatever they could dish out in response.

He didn't, though. Yeah, he was an evil prick, but he stopped himself before he could do any damage. He had some self-control most of the time. So he didn't tell anyone anything.

What he did do was call down to Lieutenant Jake something-Polish in engineering and ask if he wanted to have dinner. Because, Christ.

Obviously he had to do something.

* * *

"--to know exactly what she said that was so off-base. I mean, can you believe it? She's the _head_ of the fucking _department_, and she's practically begging me to explain this basic idea to her."

Jake something-Polish was a talker.

McCoy sat back and watched the condensation slide down his glass. "Uh huh."

"Well, it's ridiculous. And the worst thing? Ever since that day, ever since I proved her wrong one time, she hated me. I should have passed that class without a thought, but she nitpicked every damned thing I turned in." Jake sat back, warm brown eyes flashing humor. "Some people just can't handle superior intelligence."

McCoy blinked.

Okay, so he hadn't spent a lot of time with Jake after he fixed his hand and came to his attention that first time. But he was pretty sure he would have noticed if the guy was an egocentric prick.

Jake flashed a smile, as if waiting for agreement.

"You're serious with this crap?" Well. This was a date or something, but he was still Len McCoy and less than diplomatic at the best of times.

Jake laughed. Blond, good-looking. Dark eyes and smile lines around his eyes that meant he'd lived a cheerful life.

And luckily he gave the right answer. "Come on, no. Well, not really. She was picky because she was a bitch, but that was the case before I ever corrected her question on that test." He grinned. "I exaggerated because intelligence is sexy, Leonard."

McCoy smirked, relaxing a little. "I'm a doctor who's got five years on you, Jake. I'm not some wide-eyed cadet who gets weak in the knees over big brains."

Jake chuckled, lifting his beer in toast. "You'll be bad for my ego, but here's for honesty."

McCoy tapped glasses dutifully and sat back. He couldn't help but watch Jake's mouth around that bottle, the curls of his throat as he swallowed. Damn, but the guy was attractive.

This was a good idea, doing this. It had to be.

"Anyway, so the biggest thing about that one day was when my little sister was at the academy she called me up. Turns out the question from her test had been pulled from a text book we weren't using. So when I proved it wrong they changed it in the book. Gave me credit in footnotes." He grinned. "It's not every Lieutenant who gets his name in a Starfleet textbook five years into his career."

McCoy smiled when Jake paused for air, because he was probably supposed to. "Good for you."

"Oh, Jesus, but if you think that was bad, I've got to tell you about the captain on my first ship."

McCoy sipped his bourbon. He curled the glass between his hands, listening as Jake's words became a hum.

Jesus. Talkers. McCoy could handle talkers – he was best friends with two of the worst – but man. It was easy to tell with talkers just exactly how much or how little they knew. And Jake? Cute guy, but damned if he had anything to say for all his talking.

He was pulled from his impending stupor by the chime of his door.

Jake's hum slowed to a stop, and he flashed McCoy a 'what could be more important than me' look that could've come straight from Jim.

McCoy just shrugged, getting to his feet fast. "Sorry. CMO. I can't ignore it."

Jake smiled, but sighed audibly as McCoy headed for the door.

God save him from good-looking divas. Jesus.

He normally didn't lock his door while he was awake. People showing up could mean emergencies, and it took the fun out of having doors that opened on verbal command if he actually had to get off his ass.

But. Date. So he'd locked it, feeling annoyingly sheepish about the idea that he might need the privacy at the end of dinner.

He thumbed the panel to open the door. "Yeah?"

"I have questions for you," his visitor announced with solemn gravity that was belied by the twinkle in his eyes.

Of course it was Pavel. Jim and Spock both knew he was busy that night, and Pavel was his only other regular visitor.

He lofted something small he held in one hand. "Because most of this makes no sense at all."

McCoy grinned at the kid, then remembered he wasn't letting himself grin at the kid anymore, and finally he remembered his guest. "Hey. Pavel. You, uh, you think it could wait until tomorrow?"

Chekov shrugged. "Spock would say that the pursuit of knowledge should never be delayed," he said with a smile. Then he blinked and seemed to take McCoy in for the first time. His brow furrowed. "You are out of uniform."

"I know that." McCoy didn't _grin_ at the kid – he wasn't doing that anymore – but he did smile a little at the shock on Chekov's face. He didn't wear civvies all that often – he worked such long hours that there usually wasn't much point in changing into anything but PJs after a shift, and if Starfleet could be commended for one thing above all others it was that their uniforms were actually comfortable.

Still. Date. So he was wearing regular clothes – dark pants and a button-down Jim had made fun of him for bringing because it was blue and didn't he have to wear enough of that already? But it was darker than his uniform, and Jocelyn used to say blue was sexy on him. Something about his eyes – whatever, if he tried to think of himself as sexy he'd just start laughing.

Pavel squinted at him, at the clothes, getting that research-project curiosity into his face. He blinked once, looked down at the thing he held – book, McCoy could see, an actual paperback book – and seemed to hesitate.

"Tomorrow, Pasha." But McCoy thought about going back inside to Jake's next story about his infallible brilliance, and found himself reaching for the book instead. "But first, what could you possibly have read that could stump you?"

Chekov let him take the book, but didn't answer. "This is a bad time?"

"Unless someone's dying," came the cheerful-sounding voice McCoy had heard way too much of already that night, and footsteps brought Jake around behind McCoy in the doorway. "Oh, hey. Chekov, right?"

McCoy shot Jake a look, annoyed for no good reason when Jake's arm slid around his shoulder like he was staking some kind of claim.

Date wasn't going _that _well.

Pavel's wide eyes went from McCoy to Jake to Jake's arm. "Oh. I didn't..."

The kid didn't have many shields at all. What he felt, and sometimes what he thought, flashed right there on his face for all to see. But this was too many things too fast for McCoy to interpret – confusion, recognition, embarrassment, confusion again. Something stark like pain that came and went so fast McCoy might have made it up.

He stepped back, meeting McCoy's gaze again and flashing an awkward, strained smile. "Sorry. Tomorrow, then, if you can."

McCoy returned the smile after a moment, his stomach giving a twist that he ignored. "You got it, kid. You want this...?"

But Chekov was already gone, practically fleeing down the corridor.

McCoy looked down at the book he'd taken from the kid. Jake tugged him in and the door slid shut behind them.

"He a friend of yours?"

"Not...exactly?" McCoy smiled a moment later when he registered what Pavel was reading. _Uncle Tom's Cabin. _

He shook his head, amused and aching. "Yeah. Yeah, he is."

He thumbed through the pages absently as he moved back towards the table and the remains of dinner. He'd never read the book, and he never mentioned it to Pavel. But if the kid went in search of stories about the American south – and McCoy was willing to bet that's exactly what he did – than this would have shown up on a lot of lists.

"--how you do it," came filtering into his head before he could set the book down.

McCoy blinked, looking over at Jake. "What?"

Jake sighed, the same almost-offended little piff of air he'd vented when McCoy answered his door. "He's weird, that's all. I just don't think I could..." He shrugged.

McCoy set the book on the table. He turned to Jake. "You don't think you could what?"

"I mean," Jake went on, sitting back down and lifting his beer, "he shows up in Engineering all the time. He gets Scott all frothed at the mouth about some transporter theory they're working out." His smile lost a little of its friendly edge. "Scotty keeps threatening us, saying he's going to get Chekov to teach us about manual transport calculations. That guy – he's not even twenty, you know that? He's not even an engineer, but he's the one Scotty's working on some special project with. It's kind of insulting."

"He's seventeen," McCoy answered. He reached over and grabbed his bourbon, but didn't sit. "And he saved the captain's life with those manual calculations. In fact, I remember hearing that he had to run through half the ship just to get there in time, since nobody down in your area even thought about trying it."

"Hey." Jake sat back in his chair, hands in the air. "I'm just saying those big-headed kids freak me out a little bit."

McCoy scowled. "Excuse me? Weren't you the guy just talking about how people can't handle your superior intelligence?"

Jake laughed. "Peace, Leonard. You want me to shut up about the little Russian kid just say so."

"Or maybe you're jealous because the kid's work with manual transporter operations will get him a lot more than one footnote in one textbook – and while he's still a year younger than you were when you started at the Academy."

"Right." Jake's eyebrows shot up, and his smile wilted at the edged. "Look, can we just pretend the last five minutes didn't happen and go back to what we were doing?"

McCoy hesitated, but sighed. "No offense, Jake, but I don't really want to sit through another hour of stories about how much smarter you are than everyone. Especially now." Big-headed kids. Jesus.

Jake's smile faded. "Okay..." He sat up. "So...what's happening instead?"

That was the question.

McCoy wasn't smooth or charming – or dishonest – by nature, and he wasn't about to fake it now. "Look, I, uh...I didn't invite you over thinking this was going to go anywhere serious." He moved to his chair and sat then, flashing a wry smile. "You're a good-looking guy and I needed...hell. I don't know. I've never been good at this."

"Mm hmm." Jake stood up suddenly, setting his bottle on the table. "Luckily I _am_ good at it."

McCoy reached for the bourbon, pouring himself a healthy amount in preparation for another lonely night.

"You're not my type, you know that?" Jake moved around the table slowing, dragging his fingers across the surface. "I mean, you're gorgeous in this rugged kind of way, but I usually like my men a little...prettier."

McCoy snorted, but accepted the words. Wasn't a sting, really – he wasn't pretty. He wasn't bad looking, even if age showed on him a lot harder since the divorce, but 'pretty' wasn't something anyone ever would have accused him of being.

Jake appeared at his chair, legs brushing McCoy's knees.

McCoy looked up, eyebrows rising.

Jake was smiling, slipping in even closer. "So I wasn't planning on anything more than one night either."

He blinked. "What?"

Jake chuckled. "You've got a hell of a temper on you, and you're kind of a bore. No offense."

For some reason that made McCoy relax a little. He smiled faintly.

"But you're fucking sexy, and you can program up a mean dinner." He nodded back towards the replimat with a grin. "So I talk too much and you're a boring grouch. Doesn't have to be a wasted evening." He held out a hand. "Come on, doc. Shut me up the fun way."

"Well, hell." McCoy grabbed his glass and drained the bourbon, then reached out and grasped the offered hand.


	7. Chapter 7

He wasn't an introspective person, really. He thought philosophy was ridiculous, and he never spent too much time wallowing in the how-did-I-get-heres of the world.

But he found himself wondering as he moved down the hallway exactly how the hell he had gotten there.

He was supposed to be in his quarters fucking a vapid, good-looking egotist. That was all set, agreement made, decision reached.

So why was he moving down the hall, swayed by maybe one shot of bourbon too many, his throat scratchy from having to shout, and still hearing the echo of Jake's ticked-off response?

It was a weird fucking world.

But no. He knew why, because he was going to face it down. That's why he was in that corridor, feeling dangerous and prickly and lightheaded – and how much bourbon did he drink, anyway?

The kid. The kid was why.

The kid had shown up at his door, thrown off the rhythm of the night. Made Jake turn into an asshole with smartass comments about kids with big heads.

Reading some book about the south because he was...interested. Showing up at McCoy's door because he wanted to ask questions, wanted to understand where he came from.

All it took was one last comment from Jake – because the guy wouldn't shut up, even past second base:

_'You know you broke that little Russian kid's heart, right? He must have a hell of a crush on you.' _

That was the end of the night. McCoy had pushed him away as the anger that Sulu and Uhura had lit in him flared up bright and fierce.

When Jake called him a cock-tease McCoy nearly slugged him, thinking about Bauer. Instead he all but shouted Jake away, and drank a couple glasses of bourbon way too fast once the door was locked again.

So, now. Now, with his thoughts cloudy and his anger bubbling, it seemed like a great time to stagger down the hall and face the kid.

The doors were closer together on level seven – ensign quarters must've been smaller than officers'. He didn't know, he'd never been an ensign thanks to the strange way this ship and its crew were first formed.

He'd looked up Chekov's room assignment in his medical records, and he scowled as he reached the right door and slowed to a stop. He reached out, jabbed the panel to request entry, and folded his arms over his chest to keep from swaying too badly.

The door slid open after a long minute, and Pavel stared out at him with surprise in his shadowed eyes. "Len?"

"Yep." McCoy stood there, scowling.

Pavel's face showed his confusion plainly. And his worry, and there was something so fucking sad underneath it. "Is...did you want to come in?"

McCoy accepted the invitation and moved past him – didn't need everyone knowing his business, after all, and these rooms were too damned close together.

Yeah, the quarters were smaller. No replimat, no kitchen like the officers got. One room, bed and closet and desk and dressing area, and a separate bathroom that was probably also embarrassingly tiny.

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to get a good pace going, so McCoy just turned and stood there.

Pavel moved in after him slowly, brow furrowed. "Something is wrong?"

McCoy opened his mouth, but the words didn't come out.

Exactly what was it he was confronting the kid about, anyway? He wasn't so drunk he would yell at Chekov about what his friends thought he felt. He couldn't blame the kid for ruining a date that was probably doomed from the start, or interrupting the preludes to sex that McCoy probably would have regretted later.

So...what? What the hell was there to say?

He shut his mouth, annoyed.

Pavel moved in, concern growing in his eyes. "Len, what is it? Your...that man, in your room, did he...? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong, kid." McCoy let out a gusty sigh and dropped into the little chair in front of Chekov's crowded desk. "Hell. Everything's wrong. Or just...I don't know."

Pavel regarded him. The smallest tentative smile tilted his mouth. "When you do know, will you tell me?"

"What's that poem?"

"What?"

McCoy blinked, nearly echoing Pavel's confused 'what'. He thought about it, and decided he did kind of want to know, though it had nothing to do with anything.

"That poem. Yevtushenko. At the end of the book, the one you didn't translate. The one that's all scratched out."

"What does..." Pavel shook his head, running a hand across his face as if he actually had been sleeping. "I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand. I just...want to know."

Pavel regarded him, that overly-serious face of his reminding McCoy how absurdly aware the kid could be. "You came here in the middle of the night to ask me about a poem."

"Yes." McCoy blinked. "Well. No. Of course not."

"What happened to your friend?" Pavel asked almost on top of his words, something flashing through his eyes.

"My...oh, Christ. Come on, kid, what--"

Chekov looked away from him. He rubbed at his face again, waving his other hand in the air. "No. I don't want to know."

McCoy sat up in that tiny desk chair, studying Pavel. That shadow in his eyes wasn't from sleep, it was...something else. The same thing he kept trying to scrub off of his face.

Looked like they were both talking around whatever they were really thinking about.

McCoy cleared his throat. "You first, kid. Poem, then date."

"Date." Chekov's hand dropped, and he stood for a moment stiff and thoughtful.

"Yeah. Date." McCoy's hazy drunk feeling was starting to sharpen at the edges. Why else would he feel guilty at the admission? He didn't owe the kid anything.

Chekov looked at him, eyes wounded, but he didn't say anything about it. Maybe he realized, like McCoy did, that whatever issues he had weren't things he could lay at McCoy's feet as if he'd done anything deliberately.

Pavel moved across the small room and sat on his bed – McCoy was taking up the only chair. He sat with spine stiff, almost at attention, and spoke quietly after a moment.

"The poem...it's nothing. A silly..." He frowned. "It is called _Zavistlivost'_. Envy. The poet speaks of his envy of a boy, a child, who is smarter than he will ever be, and braver, and more passionate."

McCoy watched him, the way his fingers sort of dug into the cover of his bed. The way he tended to make admissions in a softer voice than normal.

"That's it?"

Chekov nodded, shoulders lifting in a weak shrug. "I had...I was having a bad time once, and the poem..." He sighed.

He looked away from McCoy at the desk behind him crammed with papers and open texts. The bookshelf against the wall piled with volume upon volume. The panel lit up over the wall behind the desk that showed a page in mid-stream, a page full of some kind of calculations and symbols that McCoy would never understand.

"Envy. That's all." Chekov sagged a bit where he sat, shoulders slumping. "Envy turns to anger so easily. Envy becomes hate. And being the subject, the boy, the target of such hate..." He flashed a weak smile. "I didn't want to think of my favorite poet ever feeling towards anyone the way people have felt towards me. That is why I marked it out. It was childish of me."

"Understandable, though," McCoy said after a moment. He wanted to reach out to Pavel, to touch his arm and smile at him until he smiled back.

Pavel looked up suddenly. "That was my turn. Now it is yours."

He smiled wryly. "Nothing to tell, really. It was a date. Didn't end well. The guy's a prick."

"Good looking, though?"

McCoy shrugged. "You couldn't tell for yourself?"

Chekov shook his head. "Attraction is different for everyone, isn't it? I don't ask if he is good-looking to me, but if he's good-looking to you."

"Oh. Well...yeah. He's an attractive guy." McCoy chuckled to himself suddenly, the haze of bourbon making the whole idea of that stupid date easier to handle. "He's an idiot. It doesn't matter – he's never gonna give me another look after tonight."

Pavel regarded him, searching his face, intent. "Do you want him to?"

"Nah. Well...shit." He stood up, energy sparking in him as he thought about the absurd path his night had taken. "I don't know. It would only have been sex, you know? But that's not really 'only'. I knew he was interested, and I don't know that about anyone else. I'd have to gag him or something, but Jesus. Sometimes..." He paced the small length of the room just to have something to do. "I'm tired of spending the night alone all the god damned time."

Chekov didn't speak for a while, just watched McCoy's frenetic footsteps. The kid put a lot of pauses into conversations, which McCoy had learned to appreciate. Sometimes with Jim, and to a slightly lesser extent Spock, there was this jumble of conversation. This constant need to one-up and retort and be clever, and the words just piled up after a while.

Pavel took his time with things. Oh, he had his days. When he was excited about some theory or other he could pile words on top of each other for hours.

But when they talked about real things – homesickness and childhood and sex and relationships – Pavel took his time. He didn't feel the need to rehearse his reply while McCoy was still talking. He didn't need to be clever. He admitted ignorance, admitted confusion.

"Do you think I am good-looking?"

McCoy's feet stopped so fast his body nearly unbalanced – liquor made him uncoordinated at best. He wheeled around and gaped at the kid, feeling heat in his gut almost instantly. "What?"

Chekov was red-faced, but he met McCoy's eyes. "I just want to know."

"Why the hell do you care what I think?" McCoy managed to get out after a choked moment. "Jesus, kid, you need to get out there with kids your own age. You need to care what they think about you, if you're gonna care about anyone. Some bitter old shit like me..."

"I am asking you," came the simple answer. "Or is that your way of saying no?"

Damn it. McCoy moved to the bed and dropped, heavy, beside Pavel, not looking at the kid. "It's my way of saying that what I think doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

McCoy had to draw in a breath and take a second. He had to tell himself rather forcibly that Pavel wasn't implying what McCoy thought he was. "Well, it shouldn't. It can't."

"It can't?" Pavel gave a strange, dry kind of laugh. "You say I should speak to someone my own age about it. There is no one on this ship who is my age. Perhaps you mean closer to my age, then. I care what Hikaru and Nyota think of me, they are my best friends, but I do not care and have never asked if they find me attractive."

"What the hell?" McCoy still didn't turn to him – he couldn't, he was already sitting in a dangerous spot so close to the kid. "What happened to the guy who thought he was asexual? Because you sound an awful lot like someone who's trying to..."

"To what?"

McCoy scowled, tasting bourbon at the back of his throat. It was bitter. "Is this how you talked to Bauer?"

Chekov didn't answer.

"Because, Jesus, kid. If it is I think I can tell you why he went after you." McCoy twisted, staring at him.

Chekov flinched, drawing back as if physically slapped by those words.

It was infuriating, really. "Well? Did you and Bauer have this same conversation? Did you look at him with those big innocent eyes of yours and ask if he thinks you're attractive?"

Irritated and starting to cross over to the unpleasant, heavy side of being drunk, he stared hard at the kid. "Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing you don't know what you're doing. No one is so smart and so damned innocent, Pavel. You've got to know how it sounds, asking questions like that."

"Everyone has their blind spots," Chekov said, his voice flat. "This is mine." He stood, as stiff as if he were at attention. "You need to leave."

"Fine with me." McCoy got to his feet somewhat unsteadily, but tromped to the door without losing his balance.

It wasn't until the door opened that Pavel spoke again.

"I did not speak to Bauer like this. I have never spoken to...to _anyone_ like this. Because it's humiliating to be so stupid about something, but I trust you."

McCoy hesitated, but stood still in the doorway.

"No...it isn't only that I trust you. And it isn't because I have some blind spot about how it sounds." The words were low, another confession, but the kid plowed on, like usual admitting things that other people might not.

"It's because I care what you think. About me. In that way."

God, he either needed another drink or he needed to take back the last two he'd swallowed down. He swayed there in the doorway and couldn't answer.

"You know something, Le...doctor?"

McCoy flinched.

"I never before thought I could have such thoughts, but lately I have wished for things that no one should ever wish for. I wish Bauer had managed to get what he wanted."

McCoy turned instantly. He gaped at Pavel, his stomach curling at the stark look in those eyes he had grown so fond of.

Pavel met his gaze evenly, though his voice was less than steady. "I wish I hadn't bitten down, or that he had overpowered me anyway. I wish that...that _one_ of them had gone through with it. Because...I would be miserable, yes. Some tragic figure, some victim. But I wouldn't be a _child_ anymore."

He winced again, moving in far enough that the door shut behind him. "Jesus, Pavel, don't say things like that."

"It is the truth." Pavel didn't look away from him. "This thing is hanging around my neck now. I think about it all the time suddenly." He went on, though the brightness in his eyes was getting too liquid to miss. "Because I feel safe with you. Because, to me, you are attractive. Very. And you make me laugh, and make me forget things. You make me feel like a regular person, and I have never been that before, not to anyone."

"Pasha..." McCoy shook his head, wordless, and held his hand out to the boy as he stumbled closer.

"No." Chekov nodded at the door, cheeks red but eyes firm. "You need to leave."

McCoy stopped where he was, but he didn't turn, didn't leave. "I can't have this conversation with you."

"Then _leave_," Pavel insisted, pointing at the door. "I am not a normal person to you. I know that now. The things you said...asking if I talked to Bauer this way."

McCoy frowned. "I didn't mean--"

"I know. You are not cruel. You said it because you wanted me to get angry. To stop talking as I was. You...are not interested in me. You can't think of me like a normal person."

"Pasha, you _aren't_ a normal person."

Pavel watched him as he approached. His hand lowered slowly.

"You're too young, and you're too damned old. You're too smart and too clueless. And if there's someone out there who could...could teach you about this blind spot of yours, it isn't me."

"Why not?" Pavel's hand curled into a fist at his side. Frustration made his voice uneven.

McCoy hesitated. He needed sobriety for this talk. Needed some distance, needed to not have some cocky engineer's kisses bruising his lips.

At least...well, this was Pavel, and at least they had this streak of honesty between them.

"I'm old, Pasha. I'm old, I'm a doctor. I helped you after a bad thing happened. If you trust me...I've got to live up to that. That means not turning into one more creep who tries to turn your trust against you."

Pavel shook his head. He sat down slowly on the bed, brow furrowed and eyes searching the air in front of him as if the answers that would unjumble his confusion would pop up out of nowhere.

"You think I need a doctor, or a...a what? A parent?"

"I think you need someone," McCoy said slowly, moving to the bed and sitting beside Pavel, "who can show you that this bad thing that keeps happening to you isn't always going to happen."

"I trust you," Pavel said softly. He faced McCoy, nervous and brave in that way McCoy had admired from the start. "I didn't trust the others. Is it a bad thing if this time I-"

"God, don't say it." McCoy dropped his face into his hand, rubbing at his eyes.

"I do want it?" Pavel went on anyway, stubborn to the end. "If this time it is my choice?"

"You don't know what you want, kid."

Pavel laughed, sharp and old. "I expect even you know how patronizing _that _is. I don't know because I've never had it, is that it? Then how am I to learn?"

"You learn with someone your own god damned age."

"As I pointed out earlier, there is no one else my age on this ship. There is no one my age in Starfleet. People my age will enter the academy this year, and will be in a position where I might actually meet them in another four."

"Damn it, kid." McCoy dropped his hand, looked at his lap for a long minute. "You need something normal. You deserve it, after the life you've had. What's normal for you is some fit young guy who laughs at your jokes, or some pretty girl who's awed by how brilliant you are. What's normal is starting slow, with someone else who's just starting. It's not hooking up with a divorced doctor twice your damned age."

Pavel's hand appeared on McCoy's arm, making him look up.

Pavel was too damned close, too vulnerable. Too brave, meeting McCoy's gaze with eyes that hid absolutely nothing. "If I am meant to not be normal, I don't want to have something normal forced on me. At this point, it would be abnormal." His mouth twitched up on one side.

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Then you need some abnormality." His smile faded. He searched Pavel's eyes. "You need something different, Pasha. Because what you've had so far is pretty screwed up."

"I agree."

Pavel moved fast then. He slipped closer on the bed, until his narrow thigh was pressed against McCoy's broader leg. His hand slipped up McCoy's arm.

McCoy had an instant of warning, of knowing exactly what was coming. A moment when he could have pulled back or pushed him away.

Instead, surrender flipped like a switch in him, and the moment before Pavel was close enough McCoy moved to meet him.

His lips were dry, warm. Soft, for the first few moments at least. When he seemed to realize that McCoy wasn't pulling away he pushed in harder.

McCoy found his hand tangled in a mop of soft curls. He buried his fingers, cupping the back of Pavel's head with such a potent sense of need that it shocked him. Kissing Pasha, kissing this incredible kid who loved to talk to him, who read books about the south, who treated everything like some research project.

Who trusted McCoy, and wanted this thing he'd almost had forced on him so many times.

God, it was heady. Pavel's breath was warm on his cheek, and there was a tentative edge to his kisses. He hesitated before every shift, every tilt of his head. His hand lifted from McCoy's arm and hovered for a moment uncertainly before curling over his shoulder and tracing a line down his chest.

Jake the engineer had been a pro. Before he spoke one time too much and got his ass kicked out, he'd laid a few skills on McCoy. He kissed like a devil, skill and grace there that McCoy felt clunky going up against.

This? This was an entirely new thing.

McCoy heard himself making a muffled noise against Pavel's mouth. Hands that were wandering without his permission smoothed up the slender line of Pavel's back, bone and long lines of smooth muscle. Thin, but the running kept him in impressive shape, and...

Jesus.

He heard his own voice, growling and low and strange, speaking the word out loud. "Jesus." Breathing it against Pavel's mouth.

Pavel drew back enough to meet his eyes, uncertain. "Is this...?" With his mouth red and damp, his eyes only half-opened, his face flushed.

McCoy chuckled, hoarse, leaning in and nuzzling his abandoned mouth across Pavel's jawline. "You're so fucking beautiful."

Pavel's breath caught. His head tilted, pushing closer to McCoy's mouth. He squirmed under McCoy's hands as if he wanted to pull closer, but their awkward position sitting on the edge of that bed was getting in the way.

McCoy nearly acted on instinct, but stopped himself before actually pushing Pavel flat on his back. This was too important, this kid was way too important.

He drew reluctant lips off Pavel's jaw, finding his mouth again briefly before drawing back a few inches.

"How you doing, kid?"

"If you're going to insist on calling me that, do you have to do it _now_?"

McCoy blinked, but as the smile stretched over Pavel's face he found himself laughing, low. Happy. "Sorry. Pasha."

"Better." Pavel squirmed again, trying to push in closer. "I'm fine. More than fine."

"Good. Then get over here." McCoy wasn't an out of shape guy himself, and he was broader and taller than Pavel. It wasn't much effort at all to lace his hands around the kid's waist and all but haul him over.

Pavel got the idea fast and came willingly, straddling McCoy's lap without hesitation. His hands slipped up McCoy's chest, eyes glued to the sight as if he was amazed he was touching.

McCoy knew the feeling. He reached between them, laying his hand over one of Pavel's, meeting his eyes. The warm slender muscles of Pavel's thighs flexed against his lap, and his body was starting to stir in answer.

There was a voice in the back of his head, a sober, practical voice, that was trying to remind him of his determination to stay away from the kid. To be the better man, to not give in to anything as silly as temptation when the consequences might be so fucking bad.

But everything else was singing inside of him. His lips tingled, his body felt sensitive and anxious and overheated, and nothing about it felt wrong.

He pulled Pavel's hand from his shirt and laced their fingers together.

"It was never that I didn't want you. You know that, right?"

Pavel nodded. He looked from McCoy to their joined hands, and he smiled suddenly in a warm, almost peaceful kind of way.

McCoy remembered suddenly Sulu's comment in his office, about how Pavel would ask such innocent things, like what it felt like to hold hands.

He smiled, the warmth going through him no longer entirely physical. Now Pavel knew what it felt like. Was it a crime that it was Len McCoy who taught him?

Pavel turned back to him. "So...your engineering friend from tonight?"

McCoy chuckled.

Pavel reached out with his free hand. His fingers, warm and steady, slipped over McCoy's cheek as if he wanted to feel that laughter for himself.

McCoy's throat went dry. His laughter faded. "I wanted you too much."

Pavel's throat worked. He didn't answer, just leaned in and met McCoy's mouth again with sudden hunger.

McCoy groaned into the kiss, meeting the kid inch for inch. It was better than bourbon, the glow that sparked through him at the touch of their mouths together. Better than any damned thing.

Pavel's hips shifted higher on McCoy's lap, his arms slipping around McCoy's neck to press them together, deepen the kiss.

McCoy was treading on dangerous ground – the kid was maybe a couple of inches from McCoy's stirring erection, and God only knew how he'd react to that. He was going to have to slow things down, fast.

Soon.

But first. He allowed himself one more indulgence, aware the whole time of the body against him and how it might react as his tongue slipped out to trace the soft line of Pavel's lower lip.

Pavel only hesitated a moment before his lips parted, extending the invitation McCoy was hoping for. Whether the kid had made it this far with someone else, or just knew enough about it, he didn't seem at all thrown off.

And as McCoy let his tongue dip in to that restless, hot mouth, Pavel responded. He made a muffled sound, his own clever tongue slipping out, sliding almost playfully against McCoy's.

His arms tightened around McCoy's neck, and his body slipped that much further up, and...

McCoy tore away, shuddering as the lithe young body on top of him all but ground into his erection. He groaned, fisting his hands in Pavel's shirt to try to find some control. Too much, too fast.

Pavel didn't seem to agree. His head dropped when McCoy pulled back, his breath hot and shaky on McCoy's neck.

"_Jeto chuvstvuet...ty takaja..._" His voice was a murmur, thick and intense. He angled his hips and arched, driving their bodies together again with an almost surprised exhalation as the jolt of electricity slipped between them a second time.

McCoy practically whimpered, feeling a tear of heat through him that he hadn't felt in far too long. His arms ached to crush Pavel against him, to lower him to the bed and drive them together until the boy in his arms couldn't remember his own name. Jake hadn't even come close to this, this wild and almost frantic need.

"Is this...this is what it feels like?" Pavel's breath hit McCoy's neck, the shape of the amazed words almost brushing McCoy's skin.

"Sometimes," McCoy said, shocked to hear himself sound as shaky as Pavel. "When you're lucky."

He had to stop this, damn it. He had to be the responsible one, and God. As eager as Pavel was acting, and as good as he felt, there was no way the kid was ready for the whole thing all at once. Not even most of it.

He opened his mouth to say so, but Pavel's mouth suddenly pressed warm and damp against his throat, and he arched. His breath caught in his throat, and when he managed to speak the words weren't responsible. At all.

"Can I touch you?"

Pavel murmured something against his throat, and McCoy barely made out 'are' and 'already'. He would have smiled if he wasn't so fucking turned on.

"I mean..." His hands slipped down Pavel's back, and he caught the loose hem of Pavel's shirt and slipped underneath. Skin, flesh, warm and smooth and muscles, slender and perfect.

He had to fight to speak. "I mean like this."

He felt it when Pavel smiled into his neck. "You are already," he said again, but his voice was even shakier than before.

Such a fucking mistake, all of this. He couldn't pull back, couldn't be responsible. Not when his hands slid so perfectly over the lines of Pavel's back, the curve of his waist. Not when Pavel was so smooth and warm and perfect.

"Fuck. Pasha." McCoy let his eyes slip shut, groaning as Pavel's tongue swept a curious wet trail up his throat before dragging his mouth in a hot path over McCoy's jaw. "Pasha..." His hands stopped their restless exploration. "Pasha."

Pavel's mouth slipped away, and he was breathing heavily. "Mmm?"

McCoy smiled, prying his eyes open and regretting it almost at once. Fuck, Pavel was fucking gorgeous, and even more with his mouth swollen and wet, and his eyes glazed with desire.

But he did have something to say, and this time he wouldn't be sidetracked. "You have to tell me. Promise me, if this is too much. If I do anything you don't...you've got to tell me."

Pavel's throat worked. He nodded, looking like he realized how important this was to McCoy. "And..." He swallowed again, tracing the backs of his fingers down McCoy's cheek again. "And if I do ask you to stop..."

"I stop." McCoy met his eyes. "Won't even hesitate, and I sure as hell won't blame you for it. I swear to you, Pavel."

"I know." Pavel offered a small smile, but didn't seem satisfied by the answer. "I don't want..." He shook his head, uncertain.

McCoy thought he understood the uncertainty, and it lit the fire in his chest even hotter. "I'd stop in a second. But if you wanted, I'd come back. It wouldn't be an ending unless we say it is."

Pavel drew in a breath, his eyes suddenly bright.

"So tell me if it's too much, and we'll work it out from there. That's the only way this will work, Pasha."

Pavel leaned in and kissed him, brief and gentle. "Thank you," he murmured against McCoy's mouth.

Then he straightened, and in one smooth, inexplicably sexy movement he pulled his shirt up and off, letting it fall to the floor by the bed.

"Christ," McCoy growled, solemnity vanishing. Pasha felt beautiful, and McCoy never doubted that he _was_ beautiful, every damned inch. But seeing it there inches from him, under his hands and open to his gaze, was fucking intoxicating. He watched his own hands trailing up the long, slender lines of Pavel's torso, and it made his head spin.

"May I...?" Pavel's hands lay on McCoy's shirt, fingers tracing down the line of buttons.

McCoy nodded, but leaned up to seal their mouths together greedily as he did.

Pavel's hands fumbled between them, unused to removing clothes from the other side, but he got McCoy's shirt open bit by bit as they kissed.

McCoy lost himself in the heat of Pavel's mouth, in the restless and unskilled and enthusiastic way Pavel was taking to kissing. He only let Pavel go long enough to shrug his shirt off when he felt Pavel's hands pushing it open and back.

Pavel drew back then, tearing away from the frantic kisses with a gasp of air. He fought to catch his breath, his eyes running all over McCoy as if somehow McCoy's battered old body was some prize he couldn't believe he'd won.

McCoy kept himself in good enough shape, at least, that he felt he might deserve that kind of look. Even if it did things to his already stimulated body being at the receiving end of a stare like that.

Pavel reached out, watching his own hand slip over McCoy's chest, smoothing down the lines and ridges of muscle. He licked his lips absently, making McCoy's body ache all over again.

"You know, Len," he murmured, slipping back in close, running his hands over McCoy's broad arms and shoulders, "I think I was wrong before."

McCoy swallowed, having to fight to resist the urge to grab Pavel and plaster them together, skin to skin. "Yeah? About what?"

Pavel met his eyes, but only for a brief moment before he went back to his examination of every inch of skin he'd uncovered. "I don't think I'm asexual after all."

McCoy blinked. Laughter bubbled up and rumbled from him. "That's the best damned news I've heard in a long time."

Pavel laughed, his eyes shining happily.

He reached for Pavel, stroked his palms up the boy's chest, thumbs brushing across pale nipples to see his reaction.

He pinked, his laughter stuttering silent and his teeth digging into his lip.

_Beautiful, _McCoy thought, and then said through a harsh breath. "Beautiful."

Pavel met his enraptured gaze, something deep passing there behind his eyes. "Len. I don't..." He slipped closer, driving their erections together with a whimper.

McCoy asked when he could speak, though the words were practically slurred with desire, "Don't what?"

"I don't know how to...what to ask for."

"What do you want?" McCoy reached out, slipped his hand over Pavel's angled cheek.

Fuck, but this was so bad. He wanted this kid like he hadn't wanted anyone in years, but he was so fucking _fond_ of him, too. He wanted to give him anything he could ask for. He wanted Pavel to want him, to want this, so badly that he wondered if he really would have left the room at all that night.

Pavel shook his head, helpless. He bit his lip again, and instead of finding the words he arched his hips, drove himself into McCoy's erection.

McCoy groaned, eyelids fluttered closed. He arched up to meet him, to roll their cocks together. "Jesus. Yeah. Okay, let's just..." He swallowed and pushed his eyes open. He hooked his hands around Pavel's hips and stood, lifting them both enough to twist and lower Pavel to the bed on his back.

He held himself up, arms braced on either side of Pavel, careful enough even then to make sure this wasn't too much for the kid.

Pavel swallowed, laying back and searching McCoy's face for a long moment. Enough to reassure McCoy that at least he was taking his time, really considering what was happening and not letting himself get so caught up in things that he ended up going farther than he was ready for.

McCoy met that gaze dead-on, holding himself back enough to reassure Chekov of his earlier promise.

"Only as much as you want," he said softly, holding his weight on one arm as he lifted his other hand to stroke fingers down Chekov's face. The gesture seemed to soothe Pavel, whether he was giving or receiving it. He stroked his thumb over Pavel's lower lip, smoothing the damage he'd done biting it a minute ago.

The added reassurance seemed to satisfy Pavel. He reached up and let his palms and fingers slide across McCoy's chest, taking up his earlier exploration where he left off. He met McCoy's eyes and kissed the pad of his thumb.

McCoy nearly groaned his relief. He settled over Pavel, heavier than the kid but well aware that Pavel wasn't as fragile as he sometimes feared. He took his thumb back and replaced it with his mouth, kissing him slowly, deeply.

Pavel seemed to take to kissing the way he took to everything – he wanted to learn everything about it, but he put what he already knew into practice automatically. It was him who parted his lips, him who slipped his tongue out to dip into McCoy's instantly opened mouth.

McCoy slipped between Pavel's legs, reassured all over again when Pavel opened for him without hesitation. He lined their bodies up, pushing their erections together. He moved slowly, rolling his hips to let Pavel get the idea of what he was doing, to let him ease into things.

Pavel gasped a harsh, helpless sound into McCoy's mouth before breaking the kiss, head falling back onto the bed. His mouth opened, breathing ragged, his head arching back. "Len. Len..._ty ...ty samyj krasivyj..._"

"God, Pasha." Wasn't going to last very long if Pavel kept murmuring like that. McCoy gritted his teeth and bent to nibble on the exposed line of Pavel's throat, settling their bodies into a slow, pulsing rhythm.

Pavel's hands slipped from McCoy's body, fingers grasping the sheets under them tightly. His body moved to meet McCoy's, hips arching frantically the longer they went on.

He was young, he was new to it. McCoy knew he wouldn't take long, but he wanted to make sure Pavel enjoyed himself, that he had no doubts about a repeat performance. He curled his hand down Pavel's side, finger trailing over the waist of his pants though he made no attempt to undress him further.

He curled in to him, tracing his mouth over dampening skin at Pavel's collarbone, thrusting to meet his arching hips faster. He shut his eyes, losing himself in the smell and taste of clean sweat and smooth skin, and the constant throb of pleasure sliding up his body with every thrust of his hips.

Pavel's whimpers got louder, even less controlled. He drove up into McCoy's body, losing the rhythm in a sudden growing need.

Close. McCoy buried his face in the boy's neck, mouthing over his skin. He thumbed a pale nipple, feeling Pavel's heart pounding under his hand.

"Len--" It was the last clear word Pavel spoke before language stopped and wordless sounds took over.

McCoy dragged his mouth up to the boy's ear when he felt Pavel's body tense under him.

"Come for me, Pasha," he murmured.

Pavel reached out, grasping McCoy's bicep hard enough to hurt. His eyes flew open, his lips parted. His head fell back and his cries fell silent as he was overwhelmed.

McCoy pulled back to watch, to see every reaction cross that expressive, beautiful face. The moments of sheer pleasure, of being conscious of nothing at all except his body. Afterwards, as Pavel's hips slowed and his tension lessened, came the daze. The awe that his own body could feel something like that.

It was more than enough to set McCoy off, and he pushed against the welcoming heat of Pavel's body only a few more times before the sparks shot off behind his eyes and his body seized in overwhelming pleasure.

Maybe it was the fact that he hadn't done this in ages. Maybe it was Pavel. Whatever it was, McCoy came harder than he had in years. He dug his teeth into Pavel's neck to silence a shout, pulsing and coming and it went on and on and _fuck_.

Finally, finally he was left with the aftershocks, the release. He sagged against Pavel, panting for air, but remembered to push his eyes open and check on the kid.

Too much, too fast, the sane side of his head shouted at him. But Pavel looked at him with glassy, amazed eyes, and there didn't seem to be a shadow in sight.

It wasn't until McCoy dropped to the bed beside Pavel and felt the wall against his back that he remembered – small bed, small quarters. He wasn't in his own room, and the CMO was always on call.

But there was no way in hell he was going anywhere. Not unless Pavel asked him to. Not after what he'd just done. Pavel deserved the entire fucking world – he'd get one Len McCoy, at least to stay beside him the first time he made him come.

He let the wall brace him, opening his arm as Pavel rolled on his side, curling against his chest. He felt overheated still, but the air was prickling at his skin as the sweat started cooling. Besides, sleeping with Pavel Chekov wrapped against him, still shivering from his first real orgasm, was worth any possible discomfort.


	8. Chapter 8

Pavel's eyes were on him when he woke the next morning. His back ached from the wall, but his body was so loose and happy and warm that he didn't give a shit.

He blinked out at Pavel as the cobwebs cleared from his head.

Before he could even remember to worry about after-effects, Pavel smiled at him. A real, bright, happy smile.

"Good morning."

Some unconscious tension eased in his chest, and McCoy grinned lazily. "To say the least."

Pavel practically beamed at him, sitting up and stretching, providing McCoy's suddenly hedonistic self a full, long view of pale, smooth muscle. Seventeen, he reminded himself as he took in the eyeful.

Somehow that didn't bother him as much as it did the day before. Uhura'd said he would be eighteen in a month anyway.

Besides, he wasn't one for over-thinking things. No navel-gazing for Ma McCoy's little angel. Not when the only things about this that had ever felt wrong had nothing to do with Len himself, or Pavel, really.

They interested each other, and they sure as hell found each other attractive, and that made for a more solid beginning than McCoy'd had with the last few short-lived relationships he'd stumbled into and out of.

Of course, that begged the question...

"So...what now?" Pavel asked it almost the same moment McCoy thought it. He had moved to the edge of the bed, sitting with his back to McCoy like he was still contemplating the idea of having to get up at all.

McCoy sat up, feeling pleasant soreness in muscles that hadn't gotten worked in ages. "What did you have in mind?"

Pavel hesitated. The long line of his spine was straight, not stiff but close. "You said...that man you were with last night..."

"Jake." And yeah, McCoy was officially dead sober, because just remembering the train wreck of a date made him wince. He'd have to make sure to stop by engineering sometime that week, maybe even apologize to Jake for being a grouchy shithead. Jake was an ass, yeah, but McCoy had done the kicking-out.

Pavel nodded. "You said he would have been for sex. For one night. Is that...is that what you...?"

"You aren't Jake." McCoy answered that without having to think about it. "I'm pretty sure I can't be anything like casual about you."

Pavel looked back over his shoulder, and the glow in his eyes and the growing smile on his face were answer enough.

* * *

"Look, just stay off it for a couple of days. I'll call Perkins myself, okay? No use having a security guard with a bum ankle, he'll just have to get over himself."

The ensign – O'Reilly, gorgeous little thing with a mop of red hair and an attitude like she'd kill anyone who looked at her the wrong way – flashed him a dry look. "As long as that's coming from you and not me, fine."

McCoy chuckled, flipping the tricorder closed once he was reassured the sprain would set perfectly. "Your boss is all talk, Ensign. I'll tell him how things are. Now go on – to your quarters, and nowhere else for at least two days, you got it?"

She saluted, lazy, and stood up from the cot carefully. The ankle would hold her weight fine – if they were in an emergency situation she'd probably be good to go. But McCoy liked to play it safe with ankles and knees, and modern medicine was no substitute for bedrest and elevation.

O'Reilly limped to the door, but it slid open before she got there and Hikaru Sulu appeared in the doorway.

McCoy almost saw the dark cloud come in with Sulu. If life was a movie he'd've heard some pretty ominous music piping up in the background.

O'Reilly made her way past Sulu, who didn't look at her once. His dark, hard eyes found McCoy and stayed there.

McCoy sighed to himself. He set the tricorder on the cot and glanced over at Chris. "Give me a few minutes, okay?"

Chapel glanced at the door, her eyebrows shooting up when she saw Sulu. More accurately, probably, when she saw the look on Sulu's normally calm and smiling face. "Things are quiet today, take your time."

He flashed her a smile and headed to his office, gesturing Sulu over.

Sulu moved when he did, following him on quiet feet like a hunter stalking prey.

McCoy'd expected it, really, just hadn't counted on it quite so soon. He hit the light as he moved into his office, and after a moment hit the panel to darken the transparencies on the windows. Didn't need Sulu getting himself in trouble.

He was pretty sure he knew exactly what he was in for, and sure enough when he braced himself and turned to face his visitor, he didn't make it all the way around.

Shit, but Sulu had some serious strength in that wiry little body. McCoy'd spent enough time in bars having to watch Jim's back that he'd taken plenty of shots in the face before. But Sulu had him back almost sitting on his desk, dazed, waiting for the red haze of the punch to fade.

He tasted blood, but a quick check reassured him he didn't lose any teeth.

Fuck, getting punched hurt.

"You're lucky I keep a dermal regenerator in my desk," he muttered as he shot Sulu a look, straightening to move around his desk.

Sulu scowled at him, the heat not fading from his eyes.

McCoy dropped into his chair and pulled the regenerator from his top drawer. "Get over here."

Sulu didn't move.

McCoy shot him a look, and if his jaw didn't hurt so fucking much he'd've been almost amused by the whole thing. "Sulu. Get over here. It's not a request."

Sulu frowned, glancing back behind them. Probably noticing the lack of shocked voices or storming nurses. He blinked when he saw the clear windows were darkened, and turned a suspicious look back to McCoy.

McCoy waved his regenerator and pointed to a spot on the floor a foot from his desk.

"You bastard." Sulu moved slowly, coming around the desk and stopping on almost exactly the spot McCoy had indicated.

"Yeah." McCoy reached out and grabbed his wrist, hauling his arm closer and not missing Sulu's indrawn hiss of breath. Getting punched hurt, punching someone hurt. But at least Sulu had the training not to have broken his own fingers expressing his temper.

Scratched his knuckles good, and McCoy wryly remembered not shaving that morning. A sweep of the regenerator patched the scrapes. "Everything operational?"

Sulu took his hand back and wriggled his fingers. "Yeah."

Satisfied, McCoy turned the regenerator on himself. He licked at the taste of blood on his lip and felt the superficial, odd tingling of the tiny tears and gashes knitting themselves. He figured he'd probably need a second sweep of the thing, but he put it aside for the moment and turned his attention to Sulu.

"I asked you to be careful with him, and you couldn't even do that."

McCoy sat back, hesitant. He thought about trying to explain to Sulu just how careful he had been. He thought about telling him about Jake, about his bizarre attempt to subvert his attraction with a bone-head from engineering. Or just how much Pavel had seemed to want him, to hurt when he found out about Jake. How much he seemed to enjoy the night before, learning something about himself he hadn't known before.

Instead he just sighed, and spoke as simply as he could. "I have no intention of hurting him."

Sulu, for all he was usually calm and mellow and relaxed, could focus his attention like a frigging tractor beam when he wanted to. Right then he wanted to, and he scoured McCoy's face until McCoy had the feeling that even if he were a skilled liar, if those words had been a lie Sulu would know.

Sulu paced around the desk and dropped into the visitor's chair. "You know what they say about the road to hell, doc."

McCoy tilted his head back, rubbing his hand over the ache in his jaw. "It's paved with pedophilia?"

Sulu scowled at him.

McCoy waved a hand. "Peace, kid. Just think of it as gallows humor."

"It's not fucking funny, doc." Sulu leaned in, tapping the edge of McCoy's desk as if trying to get his full attention. "He ever tell you about Irina?"

McCoy thought back over a dozen long talks, but shook his head. "Not his mom, is it?"

"No. She was at the Academy with us. With him, but I actually knew her too." Sulu scowled. "Just ask him about her sometime."

"Yeah." McCoy finally drew his eyes down to Sulu again. "Look..."

Sulu stared at him, focused and intent and so _hard _in his stare that McCoy felt like his frigging brain was on display. Like X-ray vision in some weird twentieth century movie.

McCoy met his eyes, wishing Sulu had been Pavel's friend back in Russia, or at the academy. Wishing Sulu had known why Pavel had called him to help with Bauer. Pavel should have seen how his friend would fight for him.

"I'm not a bad person," he said finally, and was thrown off by the uncertainty in his own words. "I don't intend to hurt him. He...damn it, I'm so fucking rotten at this." He scrubbed at his face, his grainy eyes and aching jaw.

Sulu would see any lie, and McCoy was a shit liar as it was. So he went on, awkward. "He deserves to get whatever he wants, and he wants me."

Sulu's eyes narrowed, the tractor beam catching its target and tightening its focus. "That's a pretty extreme way to treat a patient."

McCoy smiled, small and dark and honest. "It's not unselfish," he said with a shrug. "I've never felt so lucky in my life that I'm the one he picked."

Sulu's expression softened, but not entirely. "Well, yeah, he's a hot young thing, right? A virgin, too, he told us. There can't be many of those in Starfleet."

McCoy's smiled vanished. The certainty that wasn't there when he was calling himself a good person was there in force now. "Whatever I did with him was despite those things, not because of."

It must have been the right answer, because Sulu relaxed. "So you'll live through the day, but...I'm not happy about this, doc. I'm not going to pretend I am, even to Pavel."

Great. Like there wasn't enough going against them, Pavel was going to have to fight his own friends. McCoy glared at the desk, getting the troubling but now-familiar (thanks to Jim and his command methods) feeling that he was going into an already-lost battle.

Jim could face those things and come out on top. Len McCoy had never been so lucky.

* * *

"Bones!"

McCoy had his hand on the frigging light panel, ready to get out of there and get to his quarters – maybe give Pavel's room a buzz – when Jim's stupid big smile came waltzing in to his sickbay.

He sighed and flicked the light off in his office anyway. "Sorry, Captain, I'm on my own time now."

Jim just laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. You're on my ship, all your time is my time."

McCoy rolled his eyes but waited, hands folding over his chest.

Jim's eyes scoured him as he approached, checking him. "Sulu tried to turn himself in for assaulting a superior office," he reported cheerfully. "I figured since you didn't call me up to bitch than he was either hallucinating or bragging, so I figured I'd better come see."

"Frigging martyr," McCoy grumbled, moving away from his office door and passing Jim on his way out. "I pulled the transparencies for a reason, damn it."

"Whoa, whoa." Jim was right on his heels, trotting and yipping like that irritating little dog McCoy'd bought Jocelyn years ago. "He did slug you?"

"Yep. But this is me not pressing charges, so if you threw him in the brig better let him out."

"I didn't...why the hell did _Sulu_ slug you?"

McCoy sighed. "I slept with Chekov."

And for a few long moments, there was blessed silence.

Then came fast footsteps as Jim found his feet and jogged to catch up with him. "Okay. Whoa. Whoa!"

"I'm not a frigging horse, Jim." McCoy reached his door way too soon, which he realized just meant Jim was going to follow him in.

Hell. At least he had liquor in his room.

He thumbed the panel to open the door and didn't bother trying to keep Jim out. "Want dinner?"

"Nah, meeting Spock in a few. Got a new assignment from Starfleet that's...a little off. We're going over some things."

"Yeah?" 'A little off' from Jim Kirk? That set off internal alarms. McCoy went to his replimat, but held off. Maybe Pavel'd be hungry if he wanted to come by.

"Stop distracting me, Bones. You're really telling me you...?"

McCoy sighed. He turned, leaned back against the wall and surveyed his best friend. "Slept with Chekov. Yeah. You want to know what base I reached?"

Jim stared at him. "Well. Um...actually, I...What? No! I mean, of course not. I don't..._Chekov_?"

McCoy nodded and waited.

Jim shook his head, moving to the couch and dropping, reclining back like he was suddenly in a shrink's office. "Jesus, Bones. I did not see that one coming."

If they were talking about anyone else, McCoy might've smirked and said something smart-assed, like 'I did.' But there wasn't much funny about this yet. Too much was still up in the air, and Jim's friendship and notoriously lax fraternization rules aside, his reaction would affect a hell of a lot.

Jim was silent for a while. His reaction wouldn't take long – it never did with Jim, and when he reacted he committed to it. Jumped in with both feet. Maybe McCoy'd be the one in the brig before the night was out.

"Okay. Huh." Jim stared up at the ceiling, hands drumming on his stomach lightly as he seemed to toss the news around in his head. "It's not that I...I know you wouldn't do..." He frowned, then grinned to himself, and then frowned again. "It's not your style to jump into something so difficult," he said after a moment, glancing at McCoy.

"No." McCoy didn't bother arguing that it wasn't difficult, because in too many ways it was. It wasn't simple, not a damned thing about it, and especially in the ways he wanted least to complicate his life.

He hadn't begun to think about that yet: the truth he'd told Pavel that morning – that he couldn't be anything like casual about him – and how that might clash with his vow not to get involved with anyone in any real way again.

Jim had been the first to tell him what a stupid promise that was to make to himself. But Jim hadn't gone through what McCoy had. He hadn't loved someone so damned much and watched helplessly as they hacked at him with a knife because they weren't content to just not love him back.

Pavel and Jocelyn...comparing the two of them in his head was absurd. The only thing they had in common, from what McCoy could tell, was curly hair.

But. The sentiment was still alive in his heart. He had vowed not to give himself to anyone, because he'd never get himself back intact. He'd sworn to himself that he'd be selfish in that one way, and no one would sway him.

His selfishness had changed, though. He _wanted_. And he hadn't had time to consider the change, to weigh out his need for protection against his need for Pasha.

"You know what I love about you, Bones?" Jim sat up suddenly, a grin on his face that didn't fade, that only grew when McCoy looked at him warily. "You save me a lot of breath, because you're so much better at berating yourself than I could ever be."

McCoy flashed a tight grin. "Seems like that should be something you hate, knowing how in love you are with the sound of your own voice."

"There are days," Jim conceded. He jumped to his feet and closed the space between them fast, pounding McCoy on the arm. "You already beat yourself up half to death over this thing, I take it."

McCoy grimaced. "To say the least."

"Alright then." His hand stilled on McCoy's arm, his grin fading. "Is this going to blow up?"

"Not if I can help it," McCoy answered instantly, meeting Jim's eyes.

"Help it," Jim instructed him solemnly. "But, more important..."

"Yeah?"

Jim smiled, sincere and easy and nothing like his usual careless grins. "Be happy, Bones. It's so fucking overdue."

McCoy blinked, surprised, and was alarmed to feel something like emotion welling up, catching him at the back of the throat.

Luckily Jim was Jim, and didn't have the patience to wait for a response. He squeezed McCoy's arm. "Want to sit in on this briefing? God knows you'll have some opinions."

McCoy grinned, clearing his throat before answering. "I'll have opinions tomorrow, too. Tonight I've hopefully got a guest coming for dinner."

Jim beamed, practically running for the door. "Definitely don't want me hanging around cramping your style, then. G'night, you complicated bastard."


	9. Chapter 9

Despite his words to Jim it took McCoy a good ten minutes of staring and debating and stressing before he finally hit the button on the communicator at his desk panel.

"_Chekov_," came the fast, brisk response.

McCoy smiled to himself just hearing the kid's voice, and yeah, he was a ridiculous man. "Didn't you have some questions about a book, kid?"

Pavel's answering grin was audible through the communicator. "_Shall I come up?_"

"Yeah. Yeah, you shall."

And it was so fucking easy. Easier than McCoy had any right to hope for.

Chekov showed up fast, talking from the moment the door opened about _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, about the utter strangeness of the old South and its peculiar brand of slavery. About the technique of an author writing so cleanly but then making characters speak in such pronounced dialect that it was hardly English.

"And I honestly don't know that I'd understand half the things they say even if I grew up in...Kentucky? Kentucky, myself." The boy was exasperated.

McCoy was amused. "That was the style for a long time, especially when writing about the south. Anyway, it was an important book in a lot of ways, but I've never heard it argued that it's a particularly _good_ book."

"Now you tell me." Pavel rolled his eyes and sighed and wandered over to McCoy and the replimat he was fighting with during most of the talk so far. "Exactly what is it you're trying to get this thing to make?"

McCoy flashed a wry smile. "Barbecue."

Pavel grinned. "_Shashlik_." When McCoy raised his eyebrows, "We have barbecue in Russia, too."

McCoy tsked, sending the latest completely bastardized version of dinner down into the food recycler. "I'm willing to concede that you might grill up some kind of meat with some kind of sauce, kid, but you do not have barbecue in Russia. Not like our barbecue."

"Probably true." Pavel leaned against the side of the replimat, watching McCoy stubbornly pushing more buttons. "My _kasha _was certainly nothing like your grits."

McCoy looked over at him, hand stilling for a moment."Hey, so...how you doing, anyway? Any...regrets, anything?"

Pavel smiled. "Well. I told Hikaru and Nyota...I hope that's okay? I told them a little of what happened. Hikaru isn't happy, so I suppose I may regret that."

"Yeah, no kidding." McCoy barely managed to keep from rubbing at his jaw. "He paid me a visit earlier."

Pavel's smile faded, eyes widening. "Did he."

"Just to make sure I know how not-happy he is. I guess since you don't have parents on the ship he felt like someone should play the role."

Pavel's face clouded for a moment, but he shook it away. "Actually, you should consider yourself lucky. At the time he said something about wanting to punch you in the face."

McCoy chuckled at that oh-so-silly idea.

For a moment he thought about something Sulu had said. Irina. He should ask Chekov about some girl named Irina.

But, screw it. Probably wasn't a pleasant conversation from what Sulu was hinting, and he figured they both deserved a peaceful night.

"You told Uhura too? What'd she say?"

Pavel's smile returned. "She hugged me very hard and said that she knew you were a good man."

Crap. That peaceful little smile meant McCoy was going to have to stop teasing Spock about Uhura. And that was _fun, _damn it.

Bless her for being so ferociously open-minded.

He cleared his throat, surrendering to the replimat and punching in a quick grilled salmon dish he figured they'd both like. "Well, your friends aside...everything else okay?"

"Of course." But the answer was slow, and afterwards Pavel hesitated.

McCoy's focus turned right back to him, ignoring the plates that appeared under the replimat's glowing lights.

"I've spent a lot of the day thinking." He caught McCoy's look and reached out instantly, taking his arm. "Not about you! I mean, about you, but not..." He shook his head, laughing at himself. "I don't have anything like regrets, if you worry about that. I'm actually hoping for..." He blushed. "More."

McCoy relaxed, catching Pavel's hand and squeezing. "Don't need to hope, Pasha, you just need to ask."

Pavel grinned, his flush growing darker. His eyes were soft on McCoy, looking as fondly at him as McCoy felt for Pavel.

McCoy had to make himself look away. "Okay. Forget barbecue, but we need to eat." He took the plates of fish and vegetables from the replimat and over to the table. "Gotta keep up the energy. So tell me what you've been thinking about all day."

"I was thinking," Pavel went on obediently as he sat at the small table, "about how different it was than I thought it would be. I knew that it had to be...good, for so many people to want to do it constantly." He shrugged, smiling through his blush. "But I never knew. I never even came close to imagining it right."

McCoy grinned at his plate, toying with pieces of steaming vegetables. Wasn't very often a young, gorgeous man was admitting to McCoy that sex with him was better than anything he'd ever imagined.

"Think of it like an experiment, Pasha. There are all these variables that have to blend together to get the reaction you want." His grin faded a bit. "Goes without saying that consent is a necessity at the least."

Pavel nodded.

"There's also the matter of mutual attraction, and compatibility, and emotional response." McCoy hesitated, looking up across the table. "Might sound like romantic sentiment, kid, but if you care about the person you're with, that's the biggest difference in the world."

Pavel thought about that. "I suppose I'm luckier than most people, then. Because I got to have everything my very first time."

McCoy might have choked if he'd eaten a bite yet.

God, to be so fucking resilient. Pavel never stopped astounding him – molested before he hit puberty, fighting off more than one pervy asshole before he was old enough to know what a kiss should be, and he thought himself _lucky_ because of the night he'd spent with McCoy.

How did he explain something like that to Jim Kirk, or Sulu? How did he make them see this side of Pavel? How did he explain that he himself was a different man in moments like these? That he became the guy he wanted to be every time Pavel looked at him with those wide, trusting eyes.

It drove him nuts that three people now had seen Pavel, and known him, and somehow how the balls to want to hurt him. He should have been spoiled, should have gotten every damned thing he ever wanted. He should have known what it felt like to be cherished. Instead, he only knew what it felt like to be forced.

"Pasha." McCoy's voice was a rough mess when he spoke. "I'm going to show you...everything they tried to do to you, I'm going to show you what it should have been like. How good it's supposed to be."

Pavel's throat worked. He set his fork down, food untouched and apparently forgotten.

McCoy stood and reached for him. "Come on, I've got an idea."

Pavel sat on the couch when McCoy led him over and waited patiently for McCoy to dig out whatever he was looking for.

McCoy nearly grinned at the look Pavel gave him when he approached with a data padd.

"What's that?"

"Greatest book about the American South ever written."

Not what Pavel was expecting, obviously, but Pavel was Pavel, and interested either way. "Which is it? Maybe I've heard about it lately."

"_Huckleberry Finn_," McCoy reported proudly. "When I was a kid I wore this book out. There's a little of that dialect thing going on, but I think you'll find it easier to suffer through. And this is definitely a good book."

He settled on the couch, sprawled on his back against the arm with a cushion behind him to allow him to pretend Starfleet furniture was comfortable.

Pavel came when he gestured, settling with a smile between McCoy's legs, back tucked up against McCoy's chest. He took the data padd, snuggled in closer when McCoy's arms looped around his stomach.

Of course he only got a page into it before he demanded McCoy tell him what this other book that was mentioned was, and McCoy talked for a while about Tom Sawyer and how he'd actually liked that one better than Huck Finn when he was young, but that changed as he got older.

As he talked Pavel's head lay against his chest, turned on his side as if to hear the words from the vibrations in McCoy's chest.

When he was out of explanations Pavel held the padd up high and made him read the first few pages out loud, because, "You know how it ought to sound, and your voice is close to his, right? It will help me know how the rest should be read."

McCoy chuckled and obeyed, rewarded by Pavel's muffled laughter at Huck's descriptions of the widow's house and all her rules.

After the first chapter Pavel lowered the padd back to his chest and started reading in earnest.

McCoy was left to enjoy the silence, the sighs and occasional mutters as Pavel worked out unusual phrasing aloud.

And then he put his plan into action. Slow, subtle.

He started by letting his hand move, brushing lightly over the firm line of Pavel's stomach.

Pavel shot a smile back at him, but kept reading without any sign of tension.

McCoy smiled down at the curls of brown hair brushing his chin. He slipped his other hand free and stroked up Pavel's arm. Up and down, slow and easy.

He didn't know the kid's body nearly well enough yet. Hadn't seen it all, hadn't touched it all. It had to be that way – taking things slow wasn't optional with Pavel – but it made him a little less than casual with these gentle touches.

His lips brushed over Pavel's dark curls.

Pavel made a small noise in his throat. "You are very distracting, Len."

"Sorry," McCoy said with complete insincerity.

Pavel laughed softly and went back to reading.

McCoy shut his eyes, feeling the relaxed curve of a thin, muscled young arm.

Pavel seemed to curl closer into him, but kept reading, sounding out some odd tangle of words until he heard McCoy's voice in them and seemed to make sense of it.

His hand on Pavel's stomach slipped under his shirt, sliding up the silk of warm, bare skin.

Pavel hesitated then, the padd lowering to his lap. "This...this isn't about the book, is it?"

"Yes and no," McCoy answered, voice already less than steady. "I want you to read it. It's one of my favorites."

"But that's not all." Pavel's head tilted back on his chest, crooking to look up at him.

McCoy smiled, leaning down to press a light kiss on Pavel's temple. "No, that's not all."

Pavel sank back against him. He left the padd balancing on his legs, slipping a hand up to rest over his shirt, over McCoy's wandering hand.

McCoy warmed at the encouragement. He leaned down, speaking in a murmur in Pavel's ear. "I want you to learn this, too."

Pavel's voice was unsteady. "Learn what?"

"What it's like to be touched be someone who cares about you." McCoy hesitated, trying to tread carefully. "It was the kid at the academy, right, who had his hand down your pants before you got him off you?"

Pavel stilled. "Yes."

McCoy kissed his hair again, gentle. "Sometimes, you know, sometimes the person you're with won't ask permission first. Sometimes the urge to touch gets to be too much." He slipped his other hand down the long, lean line of Pavel's outer thigh, tracing the seam of his uniform pants. "When that happens, when someone touches you, you have to want it. Otherwise it stops. That's how things are supposed to be."

Pavel nodded slowly.

"When you trust each other, something like this should be fun. It should be nice. Which isn't to say that you can't still say no, if you're not in the mood or just don't want to be touched. That's the other side of trust, that you tell them how you feel."

"Don't stop," Pavel breathed out obediently, stomach muscles contracting and relaxing under McCoy's hand.

McCoy smiled. "See, but without the trust and the affection, it would just be touch. Enough to get someone off, I guess, but for a lot of people the touch of just any hand isn't good enough." He nuzzled his mouth into Pavel's hair, warm and loose and caught up in the boy's reactions. "When most people talk about sex, they talk about touch. You deserve more than that. You deserve something better than even your own imagination could prepare you for."

Hard not to see the stirring in Pavel's pants, the way his breathing was rasping louder.

McCoy wasn't a romantic by nature. He wasn't a sex addict, he wasn't Jim Kirk. Sex with Jake from Engineering would have been a mistake – it wasn't his style. He didn't have to have it.

But when he was there, in the moment...God. Back when things were good with Jocelyn he used to spend hours just making her feel good. He used to love finding all the different ways she would respond.

This, with Pavel...he wasn't even doing much. Touching the kid's leg, stroking his stomach. Nothing too far out of bounds. But because of his words, because of Pavel's feelings for him, it felt like so much more.

Pavel shifted over him, but stilled when he felt McCoy's erection against him. He swallowed audibly. "Len."

"Yeah, darlin', you okay?"

Pavel nodded fast.

McCoy's fingers slipped up to the top of Pavel's leg, and carefully, slowly, curved inward to stroke the inseam of those slacks.

Pavel breathed in, but his legs slipped apart a few inches.

"Brave kid." McCoy smiled, leaning in close to Pavel's ear. "You remember this, whatever happens. Remember it should always feel like this, or you should stop it." He dipped his fingers between Pavel's legs, stroking the inside of his thigh.

Pavel's body curled, shivered. He grasped at the arm still trapped under his shirt, gripping McCoy's bicep tightly. "_Pozhalujsta, _Lyonya_..._"

Sounded like encouragement if McCoy had ever heard it before. He nuzzled his mouth against the soft skin behind Pavel's ear, relishing the shiver it sent down Pavel's body. He moved his hand, light, until only his fingertips were tracing up the inseam to the fly of Pavel's slacks. Not to tease Pavel, to prepare him.

Pavel arched and gripped his arm tighter, tight enough to hurt.

"You ready, honey?" McCoy murmured watching his own fingers trace over the tented front of Pavel's slacks. "Ready to know how it should feel when someone touches you that way?"

"Len! _Pozhalujsta..._please! Please please please..."

McCoy groaned at the desperate edge in Pavel's voice, but held himself tightly. This wasn't about him.

He slipped his hand from Pavel. The hand resting on Pavel's stomach slipped down to tug at his slacks, to fumble the button opened and carefully work the zipper down. He brought his other hand up and licked a hurried, sloppy trail across his palm, feeling Pavel's urgency growing by the second.

Pasha squirmed against him, whimpering the moment he saw McCoy's hand moving down his body.

"Jesus. Beautiful, brave kid." McCoy pushed under the open front of his jeans, under the waist of what felt like Starfleet standard boxer shorts, and found the prize in an instant. His damp hand wrapped skillfully around the achingly hard length of Pasha's erection, and squeezed.

Pavel arched, gasping a loud, ragged breath as his hips lifted up into the touch of McCoy's hand.

One firm stroke, then two, then Pavel cried out, high and helpless. His fingernails dug into McCoy's arm painfully, and he erupted. McCoy could feel the pulsing of the flesh inside his grip, could feel the warm spurts of liquid slipping over his fingers.

Seventeen, McCoy thought to himself ruefully. He sure as hell didn't miss having that kind of instant reaction time. Then again, Pavel'd probably be up for another round before bedtime, and that McCoy definitely missed.

The body in his arms shuddered for a few long, panting minutes.

McCoy kissed him, light, behind his ear. Stroked his stomach, felt his shivers decrease. He kept his hand where it was, loose around Pasha's softening cock, to get him used to the touch.

Pavel's head tilted to the side eventually, as he pried his hand from McCoy's arm. He leaned over, pressed his lips to the red marks he'd left around his bicep in silent apology, though he seemed to realize that the reaction hadn't been entirely unwelcome.

When he spoke, his voice was soft and his accent thick. "I think I dropped the book."

McCoy laughed, glancing at the padd – face down on the floor by the couch, and he hadn't even noticed it fall. He released Pasha's flesh, wiping his hand on the boy's already-stained boxers before drawing it free.

Pavel shivered when his hand left. He tilted his head around and up, and there was a look in his eyes when he looked back. A need growing under the pleasured daze.

McCoy swallowed and leaned his head down. It was an awkward angle with Pavel plastered against his chest as he was, but worth it entirely when their mouths met so hungrily.

With the energy only a teenager could still have after an orgasm, Pavel suddenly pushed himself up and twisted his entire body with lithe grace until his knees were planted on the couch on each side of McCoy and he sat straddling his hips.

"Do I touch you now?"

McCoy groaned, eyes rolling back in his head as he dropped back against the cushion. "Jesus, I'm trying not to push you."

"You're not." He leaned in and kissed McCoy, quick and light, and his smile went a little fuzzy afterwards. Like he was still amazed he could do something like that. "I want to. Very much."

Jesus protect him. "Not...not so soon, Pasha."

"Why? You would feel guilty?"

"Well." McCoy tried to ignore the pressure shifting against his own unsatisfied hard-on. "Yeah. I'm taking this thing seriously, you know."

Pavel was quiet for a moment, as if deciding how to react to that. It was the kind of thing that could set the kid's temper off, McCoy knew. But he was too smart to react without thinking it through first.

"Tomorrow, then," he said finally, decisive. "Tomorrow it will definitely not be pushing me. Okay?"

McCoy laughed, breathless, and figured he could beat himself up about it later. "Okay."

"But what about you?" Pavel shifted on top of him, deliberate. "This can't be comfortable."

McCoy groaned, gripping Pasha's hip before he could stop himself. "Fuck."

Pavel smiled slowly and moved again. "So...like last night?"

The kid was going to kill him.

How the hell did he leap into this so easily? Was it youth, stubbornness? Were near-miss sexual assaults less traumatic than the real thing? Did trusting one man really allow Pavel to recover so much that he could enjoy this so quickly?

McCoy wasn't sure it was healthy, and that would bother him later. He had to do right by Pasha, but this whole thing...

Pavel studied him, growing more serious as the seconds ticked by with no answer. "Len. Tell me something."

He swallowed, hearing the argument that was coming.

"Giving me a choice in all of this...doesn't that mean the choice to say yes as well as the choice to say no?" Pavel reached out, slipped his hand over McCoy's arm, over half-moon fingernail marks that would no doubt bruise.

That no dermal regenerator would come near.

McCoy hesitated. "It's not that easy."

"Sometimes the person you are with doesn't ask for permission first. You said so. Sometimes the urge to touch is...is too strong. Do I have to fight that urge when it's me who gets it?"

McCoy swallowed, reaching out and cupped Pavel's face. "I just don't want you to think you have to. Not to hold on to me, not for anything."

Pavel leaned in, curling up into him. His arms looped over McCoy's shoulders, his fingers toyed with McCoy's hair. "You mean you will not stop this, you will not throw me out or ignore me if I never touch you of my own free will?"

McCoy frowned, meeting his eyes. "Of course I wouldn't! I'm not some--"

"Len. I know this already." Pavel smiled. "I also know that you are the most appealing man I have ever met, and you make me feel...everything. I _want_ to touch you, so much, and it's amazing to me. I want it to be amazing to you, too."

"Jesus, Pasha." McCoy could only fight so hard, for Christ's sake. He slipped his hand to the back of Pavel's neck to guide him in closer. "Everything about you amazes me."

Pavel's mouth met his with real heat, real passion.

It wasn't all from McCoy. It wasn't McCoy trying to see what he wanted to see where there was nothing. Pavel wouldn't lie to him, and wouldn't know how to fake this. Maybe McCoy wasn't being fair to him, not letting him say yes.

He dove in to Pasha's mouth the moment his lips parted, kissed him the way he wanted to kiss him, deep and slow until Pavel's body was grinding into him in reaction. He didn't stop him moving, just gave in to his own desire and arched his hips to drive into that friction.

Pavel moaned into the kiss, moving more deliberately then. He drove into McCoy, his own cock stirring slowly to life between them.

McCoy pulled the boy hard against him, breaking their kiss to slide his mouth down the damp skin of Pasha's throat, to feel his whimpers even before they came out. He shut his eyes and arched up into that warm, eager body, and Pavel's voice echoed in his mind - 'I want to touch you, so much...'

He came like a controlled explosion, pulling Pasha tight into him and nearly drawing blood when his teeth clamped around Pavel's throat.

Once he caught his breath he met Pavel's eyes, reached between them and freed the boy's erection from his unfastened jeans. He jacked him, slow and sure, until Pavel was all but sobbing from pleasure.

Tears leaked down his cheeks when he came a second time, and McCoy kissed the trails of them as he came down from the orgasm.

Seventeen or not, coming twice in ten minutes seemed to drain Pavel. He sank against McCoy's chest like a limp puppet, murmuring soft words that might've been Russian or might've just been too quiet to understand.

McCoy had no trouble standing, carrying Pavel with him back to his bedroom. Pavel clutched him with limp hands and raised his legs to circle McCoy's hips, and when McCoy lay him down he hardly seemed to notice, not loosening his hold for a second.

So, fully dressed and wet and messy, McCoy sank onto his bed and let Pavel cling to him. Maybe clinging a little bit in turn.

He couldn't remember ever feeling more comfortable in his life.

* * *

Pavel once told him that for every event there was a chain of causality stretched out behind it. Even if the events linking that chain were random, or inexplicable, the chain itself was usually fairly detectable. This thing happened, and then that thing happened, and because this was that way this next thing happened. Everything connected, never really beginning and never ending.

But McCoy was having a hard time finding the chain, the link that hooked his life eight weeks ago to his life now. Try as he might, there was always one link that seemed to be missing.

Maybe it was that link that would explain why he felt so sick to his stomach when he thought about letting Pavel touch him. Because fuck, he was human, of course he thought about it. Of course he wanted it. He wanted those pale, slender fingers wrapped around his cock. He could picture Pavel on his knees, looking up at McCoy with that heated excitement in his eyes. He could picture Pavel's mouth, how it would feel around his dick.

God, he could imagine getting the boy naked in his bed, burying himself so deep in that lithe young body that neither of them could _breathe._

And then McCoy took those thoughts and pushed them back, buried them, hated himself for them. Pavel was eager and excited to touch and kiss and learn more and more about this thing he'd been so lost about for so long. But McCoy couldn't let him.

What the hell _was _that? Guilt? Pavel sure as hell wasn't an unwilling participant. He'd been practically begging to touch him last night, and McCoy couldn't even let him do that.

There was something he was missing.

Had to be something he could identify and deal with. There was always causality, Pavel said, and Pavel was a fucking genius.

No beginning to the chain, he'd told McCoy. Pavel's own chain could be traced to childhood, to the influences of his parents and his country and so even farther back through the whole history of Russia, of the earth, of the universe.

Well.

McCoy could follow the chain that led to him becoming a doctor. He had always been a healer, even as a boy. His cousin Davy's death had devastated him when he was a kid, made him so furious at the idea of death that he fought it off every chance he could. His old dog who was hit by a transport, who he nursed back to health – everyone told him the dog was done for, but he'd lived another eight years after that accident. Eight good years.

Every man and woman who walked into his practice in Macon with a flu, an infection, a cancer, and walked out again healthy. Every disease he researched and dissected until he found the trick to destroying it.

He got his name in journals because he never was content to treat symptoms. He had to cure diseases. He had to fix things. McCoy never met a hurt he didn't want to soothe. It was in his DNA, he figured. He lived to cure, to help, to protect.

For a while he worried that it was that link that connected him to Pavel.

He wanted to heal the pains of a brilliant, hurting kid, and one of Pavel's deepest wounds was his distrust of sex in any form.

But that didn't pan out. He'd healed a lot of people, even a couple of victims of sexual abuse. He didn't fuck them. He didn't get to know them, or warm when they kissed him, or feel pride at every little step forward they made.

The second theory was even scarier than the first.

He was always a family man. Cousins, parents, aunts, uncles. Daughter, wife. Losing Jocelyn had been excruciating, but losing Joanne had nearly killed him. Pavel was three years older than Jo. He was a kid without parents, and Len was a parent without a child.

It was McCoy's pride in Pavel that first made him worry. How he couldn't shake calling him 'kid'. How he wanted to brag about what he could do to anyone who would listen.

But he managed to nip that theory in the bud too. What he felt wasn't paternal pride - and he would happily murder the first person who seriously suggested he wanted to sleep with his daughter.

He was teaching Pavel about the kind of experiences a person should have, but teaching wasn't parenting. Besides, it was the most selfish kind of teaching in the world when a teacher knew they would directly benefit from the lessons.

So his own selfishness, his own desire for Pavel, convinced him to not even start driving himself crazy thinking sick parent/child thoughts about his new relationship.

Still, if it wasn't the doctor chain or the parent chain, then he was still missing the key link from who he was before Bauer to who he was now. He was missing the source of his guilt, the reason he wanted to give Pavel everything he ever asked for, except when he asked to touch McCoy.

What was the causal chain that linked the man he was when Pavel and Sulu showed up in his sickbay carrying Bauer to the man he was in bed with Pavel now? What was the link he was missing, the one he couldn't see but was so strong it haunted his thoughts night and day?

He wasn't sure.

And it seemed like a pretty big thing to not be sure about.


	10. Chapter 10

"Bones!"

McCoy scowled as he lofted his tray of...whatever the hell kind of meat was supposed to be floating around in whatever kind of stew filled the bowl. He understood Kirk's motivation when he decided officers should eat in the mess halls at least a couple of times a week, but he didn't have to like it much.

He headed over to Jim and Spock and Scotty, who seemed annoyed, which meant Jim's shout probably interrupted some vastly entertaining story or another.

But as he approached his eyes caught on a familiar gold shirt and head of curly hair.

Pavel was turned his way, looking at him, drawn by Jim's big mouth. But when McCoy looked his way he just smiled and turned back to his friends.

Across from him Sulu scowled at McCoy. Nyota, beside him, waved and gestured at the empty seat beside Pavel with a grin.

"Jesus, I'm in high school again," he muttered to himself, looking from one table to the other.

Well, what the hell. They were playing chess later, he'd see Jim and Spock then. Besides, he really couldn't resist a challenge like that fire Sulu was trying to glare into him.

He slipped his tray beside Pavel's and sat with a huff of air. "So this is the kid's table, huh?"

Sulu glowered.

Pavel looked over in surprise. His smile seemed instant and helpless, like the one McCoy sent back his way. "Look, we get full-sized seats and everything. Just like the grown-ups."

McCoy chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Same watery stew, too, I see."

"It's not bad. It's not chicken and dumplings, but it's not bad." Pavel flashed him a more easy, private kind of smile before turning back to his food.

McCoy tossed a smirk across the table at the two watchdogs, almost grinning at the way Uhura's smile grew and Sulu's scowl deepened in response. "You two look like theatre masks."

Pavel looked across at them. An instant later Sulu jumped, hand flying under the table.

"Ow! Jesus, Pavel!"

Pavel smiled innocently. "Eat your food, Hikaru."

Seemed to break the ice well enough, though Sulu didn't seem to appreciate McCoy's smirk in response. He did settle in to eat, at least.

"So, doctor," Uhura spoke up after a few moments, "we were just talking about Starfleet's reaction to the theories on transporter calculations that Scotty and Pavel sent in a paper on. Apparently when they're not denouncing it as...blasphemy, or something equally offensive, then they're talking about making it a course all on its own for engineering students."

Pavel choked on a mouthful of stew. "We were not talking about that!" he protested. "We were talking about you two and your inexplicable love for whatever native seafood you can have served up raw and squirming on every shore leave we take."

McCoy didn't even have to look at him to know he was turning red. He did anyway – it was a nice sight.

She smiled sweetly. "Oh, were we? I was sure we were talking about your utterly amazing work."

McCoy might've told her that he didn't need her talking up Pavel to impress him, but a little ego-boosting wouldn't do the kid any harm. Still, he cleared his throat, taking mercy on poor Pavel.

"Used to be a great sushi place near the Academy – I didn't think I'd be into it, but Jim had a crush on one of the cooks. Apparently women hacking raw fish with big knives is a turn-on." He grinned. "Anyway, surprised me but I love the stuff."

"Great. Next shore leave you can go with them," Pavel answered with renewed cheer. "And I can be left in peace."

"To find whatever's closest to a cabbage-based dish on every planet we go to." Uhura tsked. "You would have such a gastronomically boring life if you weren't our friend, Pavel."

"That's a chance I'm willing to take," he answered easily.

She smiled at him, endlessly sweet, and turned to McCoy. "They're trying to commission Scott and Pavel to write a textbook, if they can stop half the fleet's top engineers from burning copies of their paper in effigy."

"Nyota!"

McCoy chuckled. "What the hell are you two doing to get a bunch of engineers all fired up like that?"

Pavel ducked his head, the picture of embarrassed annoyance. "It is just theory."

"Uh huh." McCoy turned expectantly to Uhura, since she obviously knew something about it.

She sent a brilliant smile across the table at him. "I don't quite understand it, myself. It's some way to standardize the transporter equations that Pavel had to come up with on our first mission. I don't know why it's so controversial."

"Because the engineers in Starfleet are self-important idiots, and they don't trust any idea that they didn't come up with," came a mumbled answer from the side, and McCoy grinned over at Pavel, almost impressed.

"Maybe." Uhura laughed. "I also don't know how they plan to design an academy course around it, since Pavel's the only person in the world who can do that kind of math in his head. Well..." She shot a fond glance to the side, to the table where Spock seemed to be smirking at a lively discussion between Kirk and Scott. "One of two."

"No, no, it isn't about that." Pavel leaned in. "What we're doing is a complete redesign of basic transporter technology – the mathematics wouldn't be necessary, they would be built into the programming. The calculations are possible for manual operation now - they're not even difficult..." He hesitated, but decided to ignore Sulu's answering snort. "...but Scotty and I are in the process of proving that they're not necessary. That transporter programming is simply archaic and in need of an update."

"If it's so easy why hasn't anyone updated it before now?" Sulu asked, temporarily neglecting his sworn duty to glare at McCoy.

"Because the short-sighted _bolvan_ in Starfleet engineering think it's impossible."

McCoy's eyebrows flew up. "I thought you said it was easy."

"It _is_ easy!" Pavel shook his head, gesturing in an irritated wave of the hand that seemed to want to encompass the entire realm of small-minded engineers in the universe. "They say impossible because back when transporter technology was being developed, we understood physics in a way that said it was impossible. But it isn't impossible, or Sulu and the captain would be _dead_ now!"

"Whoa, is that a threat?" Jim called from the side table. "What the hell are you guys talking about over there?"

Pavel's face went red. He ducked his eyes. "I will sit here and eat my food now, and everyone will leave me alone."

McCoy patted his arm sympathetically even as Jim stood up and made his way over.

"I don't allow death threats on my ship. Not over meals." Jim grinned as he reached over to snag a piece of bread off McCoy's tray.

McCoy smacked his arm. "Mind your own business. The kid's being brilliant."

"Yeah?" Jim pushed McCoy's tray over enough to perch on the edge of the table. "How so? I gotta find a way to fill these stupid reports Starfleet wants every damned day, give me an update on my officers being brilliant."

If Pavel could have melted into the table right then he might have tried. "Ask Scotty, Captain. He's better at talking."

Jim shouted instantly, "Scott! How are you guys being brilliant?"

"How're we _not _being brilliant?" came the loud retort. "Ye'd have to be more specific, Captain Kirk, sir."

"Something about transporters," McCoy answered. He grinned at the betrayed look Pavel shot him.

Scotty was at their table in a flash, though God knew they could've just kept shouting across the damned mess. Everyone in the room seemed to have shut up to listen in on their bellowing captain.

"_Something_ about transporters? You're insulting us, doctor, but I'll forgive it because the lad's fond of you." Scott pushed Kirk over to slide into the chair beside Uhura on the other side of the table. "We're entirely gutting the very _idea _of transporters! What've you told them, Pavel?"

Luckily it was impossible for the kid to turn any more red than he was. He sighed, but seemed to realize he wasn't getting out of anything anymore. "Nothing, really. We were just talking about why the initial paper we sent in is getting such strong reactions."

"Aye it is." Scott beamed, proud. "I haven't been called such horrible things since the trans-warp debates back in the academy." He leaned in as if confiding something, though his voice was no less booming. "That's how ye know you're on the right track. The closer the tight-arses in suits come to actual violence, the closer to real progress you must be."

Jim clapped him on the arm, face all but glowing with pride. "Amen."

McCoy smirked at him, but he knew Jim was honestly proud of his crew, and that Jim's pride was sparked by exactly this kind of thing. Scott's work was never so impressive to Jim as when it disproved old theories or shattered former technological ceilings.

Jim wanted his ship, his crew, to be distinct. In Jim's mind that meant never thinking about anything in terms of what they _should _be able to do, but what they _could _do, however hard it may be.

"So?" Jim looked from Scott to Pavel. "Small-word it for me. I know you guys have been doing this for a while, what's the deal?"

"To hear Archer and the Academy shites tell it, we're planning the deaths of millions." Scott beamed. "The truth sounds much less impressive. To be honest, all we're doing is taking transporter technology back to where it was at the beginning stages, and correcting some initial mistakes."

"It..." Pavel spoke more hesitantly. "It's just a reinterpretation of the physics."

"But that is where the controversial aspects of the theory are," came a quiet response as Spock left his abandoned table and approached. He looked over them, moving to stand behind Nyota almost casually. "Any reinterpretation of the understanding of physics will meet with resistance, and what you propose is more than superficial reinterpretation."

Scott waved him off. "There can't be superficial reinterpretations in quantum physics. It's big or it's nothing, and it takes a fresh pair of eyes and a real lack of fear to do it up big. Which I credit my young Russian friend with providing. All I bring to the table is a complete disregard for my already-shoddy reputation back at Starfleet."

McCoy's amusement about the growing crowd around them and the interest of the other officers in the mess began to fade under a sudden realization.

Reinterpretation of quantum physics? Theories Scotty and Spock were both impressed enough with to assist in, and that the top engineers in the entire universe were all reacting to so strongly...

Jesus. This wasn't the glorified extra-credit school project he'd figured it for. This was serious stuff.

"--your contribution, Pasha."

McCoy blinked and dragged himself back to focus on a conversation he was seriously sure he wouldn't follow for a moment.

"You see." Pavel pushed his tray to the side, leaning in as his hesitation began to fade. "When you're transported, the computers take an exact genetic measurement of your body, down to the quantum level. It then disassembles every particle of mass that makes up that body, communicates that mass through space until it reaches its destination – a planet's surface, or the transporter pad. It then uses those particles of mass to instantly reassemble you to match that genetic measurement, to recreate you down to the electrons."

He hesitated, sending a crooked smile over to where Scotty sat. "In fact, it is an argument held by detractors of the technology that there is an actual small death involved with every transport."

Well, there went his appetite. McCoy pushed his tray to the side, scowling.

"They're not entirely wrong, either." Pavel grinned over at McCoy, probably hearing his breath hissing in reaction. "The computer takes its measurement and then begins disassembly, and for the length of the process your body lives on for, say, a thousandth of a second. But on reassembly you are back at the moment of that snapshot, with that thousandth of a second gone as if it never existed. That instant of life, of brain function and physical aging, is destroyed."

"Jesus, you want me to walk everywhere from now on?" McCoy gaped at Pavel before turning a dark eye to Jim. "Next time you laugh and give me that bullshit it's-perfectly-safe-Bones line, I'm gonna smack you. Sir."

Jim grinned, but turned his focus back to Pavel fast. "Okay, Chekov, you may be talking my CMO into demanding shuttlecraft service everywhere, but keep going. I have _never _understood this shit."

Pavel smiled, and McCoy had the feeling the blush was suddenly not from embarrassment. "Well, the fact is that the time involved is so microscopic that a man could transport somewhere once every thirty seconds for fifty years before we'd see measurable effects."

Not comforting enough.

McCoy glanced around, looking at Spock's neutral interest and Scotty's grinning approval, and Jim's utterly blank smile. They were attracting some serious attention from some of the surrounding tables, silence in the mess hall and a few people standing or sitting up on the tables to take in the impromptu lecture.

Pavel looked from Scott to Jim as he went on. "It's a matter of quantum-level measurements: the electrons in the very atoms of your body making a last leap that is then all but erased. Philosophical debate aside, it's completely harmless."

Jim flashed a smug grin at McCoy.

McCoy just shook his head and muttered something about mixed-messages.

"This is the same principal," Pavel went on, "that the engineers at Starfleet try to use to call our proposals impossible."

"Heisenberg," Scott put in, grinning. "If I ever travel back in time myself, I'll put a gag on the man that no science could remove."

Pavel laughed, and they shared a look like it was an old joke.

McCoy had to push down a little spark of jealousy, and then of course he had to spend a couple of moments mocking himself mercilessly for being jealous of a smile.

"You're losing your audience, professor." Jim leaned over and nudged Scotty. "Who's Heisenberg? A physicist?"

"Right you are, captain, and quite a good guess for a man without a clue."

"Look at that." Jim grinned. "I'm smart."

"Heisenberg was a theoretical physicist - for the Captain's benefit, that means he was an arse in a suit who used mathematics and theory to argue that something was impossible."

"I know just the type. So what'd he do to piss you off?"

Scotty gestured over at Pavel. "Go on, Pasha, you're better with the physics."

Pavel leaned in, excited enough to not be nervous. "The principle that Heisenberg is best known for says that it is impossible to measure precisely both proximity and momentum, which is the basis of Starfleet's argument against our work."

"Aaaand I'm a dumbass again." Jim sighed.

Pavel drew back a bit, his excited smile fading in uncertainty.

McCoy, who wasn't one for science lectures when he was in school much less at dinner, nearly threw his stew at Jim.

"Wait," Pavel said, brightening again. "It's just like watching a vid, or an old earth movie. When you want to see an image precisely as it is in one particular instant, you pause the image. You lose perspective of the _movement_ of the image in the interest of the moment. And when its in motion you catch the movement but the exact _moments_ get more hard to pin down. You see?"

Jim nodded, slow."Yeah. Okay, no, I get what you're saying."

"Score one for science!" Scott crowed, lofting his drink.

Pavel beamed. "Alright. Now..." He looked around, then grabbed the spoon from his abandoned tray and held it up. "This is a person." He stood the spoon upright on the table. "We must transport this person."

McCoy chuckled to himself when Sulu and Uhura both slid their trays over to give him more of a stage. More eyes popped up around Spock and over Sulu and Uhura's shoulders as their uninvited spectators came in for a better look at the spoon.

Pavel was blissfully unaware. His focus was on Jim. "We know where this person is, yes? It is right here. It's a good Starfleet officer, obeying the first rule of transporting..."

"'Stay _still_,'" a chorus of voices rang out beyond the table. There were some murmurs, some laughs.

Pavel looked up then, blinking at the group that had gathered around his table. For a moment he looked utterly nonplussed, and his spoon person took on a sudden lean.

"Come on, kid, don't let 'em psyche you out." McCoy, because he was enjoying the lecture for a different reason than most people in that room, leaned in and tapped Pavel's wrist, correcting so his spoon officer was standing upright again.

Pavel glanced his way, for a moment meeting his eyes. For a moment, sharing something. Just a look, really, nothing. But Pavel smiled and seemed reassured, even pleased.

McCoy sat back, clearing his throat and trying to act like a bemused observer. Like the doctor who couldn't give a flying shit about physics that he usually was.

Pavel raised his voice as he went on. "So. Our obedient Starfleet spoon calls for transport and stands very still so that the computer can take this very precise atomic snapshot, the very molecular puzzle it will shoot over such far distances and reassemble so precisely. The moment of this quantum measurement and the moment of disassembly are not the exact same moment. Because only one frame of space is measured, this spoon must be still so that the two moments are as similar as possible. This is how transporters work."

"When you're lucky," Sulu put in, wry.

Pavel beamed. "Exactly! When there is an emergency, when a transport is most badly needed, stillness is impossible. Transports fail, and people _die. _The engineers say we can not take the measurements from one space and disassemble mass from another space, because physics told us that both proximity and velocity could not be factors. We could never be sure of the exact space when movement is involved."

"But people can move during transport," came an unfamiliar voice from somewhere behind Jim. "I mean, you can move an arm or something, and show up on the other side with your arm still attached, so..."

Pavel nodded. "Some allowances _had_ to be made – people aren't entirely still, ever. From ticks and gestures to the movement of blood in veins, or electrons in atoms. But the allowance isn't in movement itself, it's in the frame of space that is transported. In order to allow for those movements, the area directly around the object is also part of that atomic snapshot."

His hand came out, drawing a small circle around the little spoon officer. "The air itself is copied and reassembled. As long as all the mass needed for reassembly is still inside that wider frame of space, small movements cause no harm."

He looked up, checking on his audience. "This is also why if you beam someone away from, say, a fire, there will be smoke in the transporter room."

"Aye it is." Scott reached out and tapped the spoon with a grin. "In the early days they'd have to clean grass and dirt and chips of stone from the pads after every transport, because part of the ground would come up with the people being transported."

Pavel shared a smile with him. "But they've made some improvements in calculations. And of course there are safeguards if a person moves too much at the last minute, so we don't beam up half a person."

McCoy blinked at the little spoon. He knew those machines were dangerous, damn it. Any machine that needed a safeguard to keep from splitting a person in half was a menace.

Pavel went on cheerfully. "Usually it results in a recalculation of the object and a delayed transport. But there have been occasions when a transport fails entirely because the person has moved too quickly, or fallen completely out of the original area. There have also been times when a second person has jumped into the same frame of space and been transported as well."

McCoy looked from the spoon to Pavel, and...funny, but for all the talks he'd had with Pavel, all the things they had shared, he had rarely watched the kid work. He hadn't seen him glowing quite this way, all that knowledge in his head bubbling out to share with others. Excited, confident.

He couldn't have looked away if he had to.

Pavel looked over at Jim, his profile filling McCoy's hypnotized gaze. "And now we get to the work Scotty and I are doing. Because those small allowances of movement are not good enough. Not when lives are lost because those allowances are exceeded. The engineers at Starfleet, the scientists, they say this is as good as it gets. But we know they're wrong. We _know _we can overcome Heisenberg and account for proximity and momentum both, because we've done it."

"You've done it, boy wonder." Jim leaned over and clapped Sulu on the shoulder. "With the two of us as living proof."

"Exactly! Complicated, yes, but of course it's _possible_."

"How complicated?" Jim and Sulu exchanged a curious glance, looking more suddenly involved than they were a moment ago.

Pavel shrugged. "In your case? It meant calculating the outside forces being exerted on you as you fell: an approximate acceleration speed of around 30 meters per second per second, if I remember right, as well as the unavoidable movements of bodies in free fall, and the fluctuations in gravity of the planet itself as it began to succumb to Nero's black hole. I had to force the sensors to measure a much larger frame of space, because calculating your exact movements would have taken much more time than we had. It wasn't an observable difference, but a great deal more of Vulcan's atmosphere came up with you than would have during a normal transport."

Jim blinked. Sulu's eyebrows rose.

"The transporter had to be overridden so it would accept the command to take that atomic snapshot of your bodies from an area of space that you were not yet in, but would be in the moment the command to energize was given. Oh, and an override to have the atomic matter that makes up your bodies actually transported from a _third _space, the space it would be in a thousandth of a second after the snapshot was taken."

McCoy wasn't sure how well the people around them knew Pavel. He wondered if they could hear in his voice the way McCoy could hear it, when the lecture became less abstract science and more actual experience. The way the words were suddenly personal. Memory, not theory.

The hesitation in his suddenly quieter voice.

"I have to admit that working out the calculations between the mass of both your bodies and the forces of freefall in enough time to put in two different coordinates for fooling the computer and beaming you in...was difficult." He sighed. "It takes fraction of an instant altogether between putting in the command, capturing the exact atomic image, and then transporting the matter, but considering your rate of motion and the archaic way transporters are designed..."

Jim's grin had faded bit by bit. His hand stayed tight on Sulu's arm. The two of them exchanged suddenly pale looks.

"Luckily we do have you both as living proof that it can be done. And if a human operator can work out the calculations, than of course algorithms can be written so that the computer can do it as well."

He smiled suddenly, the words becoming theory again. "Like the vid you pause to catch a clearer image of a moment? Instead of pausing it, you let the video play but take a photograph of the image at the same time. It's two different types of programming, two types of measurement, but there isn't a single good reason why the computers can't be programmed to do both at once."

"Arseheads and idiots at Starfleet for saying it can't be done," Scott agreed, "but once they leave us alone and let us do the bloody thing, the actual reprogramming should be easy."

"Easy. Of course." Uhura flashed a shaky smile, leaning close to Sulu.

"Easy for Scott, yes." Pavel grinned back at her and turned his smile to Scott. He set his spoon down with a fond little pat. "The end result being that when an officer is in free fall and calling for transport, it will be as fast and easy as any other transport." His eyes went to Sulu and Jim with a shy smile.

Sulu shook his head, still pale. "Leave it to you to mess with physics itself because of one incident."

Chekov shrugged, his smile fading. "Not just one." His eyes started to rise, but jerked back down to the table.

McCoy frowned, looking up past Nyota to where Spock stood, so placidly listening.

"Anyway, all the arguing from Starfleet aside, the idea of teaching it in an engineering course is ridiculous. We just have to _do _it, and they will simply have to alter the existing courses to accommodate the differences in operation."

Scott sighed suddenly, loud and gusty and cheerful. "And that, boys and girls, is the true story of Christmas."

There was laughter from beyond the table, from their uninvited audience.

A few people broke into applause, and the sincerity didn't seem feigned, but most of the group took that to be the end of the lecture.

People went back to their chairs, and voices began buzzing slowly around them again, louder than it had been with three dozen Starfleet officers suddenly debating transporter science.

McCoy wasn't sure yet if he was glad or scared shitless that he'd understood the gist of everything they said. Too much knowledge wasn't always a good thing, and he wasn't quite sure how he'd feel next time he stepped onto a transporter pad.

He hated the things enough before he knew the details.

Scotty got to his feet as the crowd split apart. He clapped Jim on the shoulder. "Come on, then, leave the boy to his dinner. Takes calories to fuel all those brain cells."

"Right." Jim jumped off the table and came around in a flash, stooping by Pavel. "If I thought I could remember a word of that, you'd fill my reports for at least a couple of weeks. You really are a fucking genius, Chekov."

Pavel fairly lit up, his smile so wide it looked like it might've hurt.

Jim reached out and grabbed the spoon from Pavel's abandoned dinner. "I think I'm going to have this thing bronzed."

He grinned like he was joking as he said it, but McCoy noticed the spoon vanished into his pocket before he was back at the other table.

In the sudden comparative privacy, McCoy nudged Pavel's arm and shot him a fond grin. "Staying true to your talent, aren't you? Yevtushenko would approve."

Pavel laughed. The smile he turned onto McCoy wasn't as huge as the one Jim had gotten, but if anything it was even brighter. It glowed from him, shined from his eyes and radiated from his skin.

He looked for all the world like that entire recitation of physics and theory was worth it just because McCoy approved. And, yeah. It took a hell of a lot of self-control to keep himself from leaning over and planting a proud, possessive kiss on top of that smile.

Luckily his control was bolstered by the worrying realization that Pavel actually was a fucking _genius. _He was actually altering laws of science, thinking of ways to change lives.

And then he was looking to Leonard Grouchy-Idiot-Bastard McCoy, MD, for approval.

Exactly how the hell did a small-town sawbones justify being responsible for the welfare of someone like Pavel Chekov?

Apprehension snaked up, choking off the proud happiness from his chest. He looked away from Pavel, looked at Jim's still-dazed face and Scotty's excited chattering with a clearly interested Spock.

Sulu cleared his throat in the relative silence that had fallen over their table. "I guess you don't know a lot about any of the work Pavel's been doing, huh, doc?"

McCoy blinked across at Sulu, eyebrows raising at the challenge on his face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

No chance the physics lesson would have mellowed Sulu. From the looks of things it went the other way – maybe Sulu remembered suddenly how incredible Pavel was, same as McCoy. Maybe he was the only person around who seemed to realize that a guy like McCoy had no fucking business being with Pavel.

"It means what it means," Sulu answered, meeting his eyes. "It means you don't know anything about him."

McCoy's protest was mild, for him. "Hey, I'm a doctor, not a genius. I don't understand half the things the kid says. Doesn't mean I'm not interested."

"Oh yeah? How interested?" Sulu sat back, eyes shooting to Pavel and then back to McCoy fast. Too fast. He even seemed to hesitate before he went on. "Did you ever ask him about Irina?"

McCoy frowned, but he didn't have to respond.

"Hikaru!" Pavel was out of his seat in a flash, chair shooting back as he stood. There was no trace of his bright, proud smile anymore.

Silence fell through the mess, as all eyes once again turned to their table. To sweet little Ensign Chekov, ship infant and resident physics lecturer, with sudden outrage sparking in his eyes.

Sulu almost looked chagrined. "Look, I'm not going to just sit here and say noth--"

Pavel's face was red, and not in the good way. "We need to talk. Now."

Sulu frowned at him. "Pavel, relax. Sit down. We're not done with dinn..."

Pavel's hand shot out, grabbing his glass of water and dumping it completely without ceremony all over Sulu's tray and into his stew.

"There. You are done. We're leaving. _Now_, Hikaru."

Sulu stood up, glaring at McCoy as if he'd started it all. "Fine, but you won't say anything I haven't heard already."

Pavel stared fire at him, but turned to McCoy before he left the table. "Sorry," he said quietly. "I will see you later?"

"Got a game of chess, but..." McCoy grinned, deliberately not looking at Sulu. "If you don't mind waiting around for me, let yourself in to my quarters."

"I don't mind." Pavel glanced back at Sulu, who stood sullen and waiting, and then flashed a wicked smile back at McCoy. "Perhaps I am still a child in some ways. I am about to be petty."

McCoy blinked. "What--"

Pavel leaned down and gripped his hair and kissed him, hard. His fingernails made sharp little trails down McCoy's scalp, tongue slipping out for just the lightest stroke against McCoy's lips.

The talking around them dropped into silence, then erupted into whispers, and there was a piercing wolf whistle that sounded a hell of a lot like Jim, but McCoy didn't focus on it. Hardly noticed it beyond the warm puff of Pavel's breath and the warmth of his mouth.

"See you tonight," Pavel whispered before pulling away. He turned on his heel and stalked out, and Sulu followed him looking like he was ready to explode.

McCoy sat back, grinning to himself slowly. Being well-kissed in the middle of the day was a nice feeling, even with all the whispering and giggles that spread through the mess once Pavel was gone.

Uhura cleared her throat, scooting her chair to the side a bit to avoid the watery mess dripping from Sulu's tray. "Sorry about that, Doctor. I suppose this is the kids' table after all."

"Nah." McCoy grinned and dug into his stew, gesturing his spoon back towards Jim and Spock. "It's a hell of a lot like eating over there, actually."

* * *

"Well, I'll say one thing for you, Spock."

Jim and Spock both turned when McCoy came in the door, Jim all but beaming at him and Spock lofting one eloquent eyebrow.

"What's that, doctor?"

McCoy went right for Jim's kitchen, ignoring the chess board and heading for the beer. "That is one hell of a nice girlfriend you've got."

Spock watched him as he came back out, beer in hand.

McCoy grinned at the expectant look. "No punchline this time. She's damned classy."

"Yes. She is." Spock looked at him for another wary moment, then relaxed. "I'm aware that human custom in regards to compliments calls for reciprocity, so..." He exchanged glances with Jim. "Your new..._partner_ is quite impressive as well."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Next time stick with Vulcan custom and just agree with me." He grinned, though, dropping into his usual spectator's armchair in front of the board.

"I am sincere, Leonard." Spock began setting up the board. "Ensign Chekov is responsible for a great deal of the work he's doing with Scotty, and once that has progressed enough to be taken seriously it will lead to revolutionary innovations. Considering that humans take age into account when measuring progress, it's all the more impressive that he has done so much so young."

"Well. It didn't come free." But McCoy couldn't get too serious. He was proud, really fucking proud, of Pasha.

Not just the work he did – still couldn't understand half of it anyway – but watching him stand up to Sulu, and knowing he was comfortable enough to kiss McCoy goodbye before storming off to bitch his friend out...

It did him good to see it.

Jim cleared his throat. "Okay, you two. We had our lecture for the week. If we're going to talk about Chekov it's going to be in the form of gossip, not science."

Spock shot him a look. "I don't see any--"

"My ship. My rules."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "A year on you haven't gotten tired of that."

Jim kicked back in his chair, watching Spock assembling pieces on the layered, complicated three-dimensional chess board. "If I ever do get tired of it, it's time to retire."

McCoy turned to Spock, leaving Jim to his ego. "Speaking of Pavel." He hesitated, since the three of them didn't talk about serious things that often, and he didn't want to step over any lines. "You...uh. You know he still beats himself up pretty hard about what happened on Vulcan."

Spock's face shadowed for just a moment, but he got it controlled and turned bland eyes to McCoy. "Ensign Chekov was not responsible for anything that happened on Vulcan, doctor. If anything he saw and recognized the gravitational disturbance faster than most might have done, and put an accurate theory to the data in time to react and save the few who could be saved."

"I mean with your mother," McCoy said gently.

"Ah." Spock hesitated, frowning at the board as if realizing some of the pieces were in the wrong places. "I wasn't aware that he ever 'beat himself up' at all."

McCoy nodded, sipping his beer. "But you've been aware of all this work he and Scotty are doing, this momentum-proximity transporter whatever."

"Of course. They consult me quite regularly about..." He trailed off, brow furrowed. His expression cleared a moment later. "I hadn't considered the possible motivations for such work, besides recognition of a flaw to be fixed."

"Yeah, well. It wasn't just Jim and Sulu the kid was thinking of back there. I'd bet you real money that thinking he wasn't fast enough to save every person he tried to save is what got him thinking about reprogramming the transporters."

Spock fell silent, placing the last few pieces and flicking the light to illuminate the levels of the board.

Jim leaned in, playing his first move fast and silent, looking between McCoy and Spock and for once actually respecting the silence in the air.

McCoy sat back, thoughtful, thinking about that first mission and all the different ways the repercussions could still be felt.

They were a few turns into the game when Spock finally spoke.

"The ensign and Scott are developing theories with the potential to save countless lives. To know that..." He looked at McCoy, expressionless, eyebrows solemn. "To think that the tragedy of my mother's death may have played a part in inspiring such a thing...it is...she would be pleased. To know that something good will come of it."

McCoy flashed a small smile, knowing this kind of thing was hard as hell for Spock to talk about. "If you wanted to tell them that yourself, I think Pavel would like to hear it."

Spock nodded.

Jim cleared his throat, his respect for solemnity pushed beyond endurance. "So. What's the kid like in the sack?"

McCoy rolled his eyes and ignored him.


	11. Chapter 11

If there was a single bad thing about finding a gorgeous, half-dressed teenager sleeping in his bed when he got in, Len McCoy was utterly unable to see it.

He shed his clothes quickly, sliding on some PJs in the spirit of taking things slow, and for the first time in years he climbed into a warm bed next to a welcoming body.

"Len?" Pavel stirred, shifting. "I fell asleep."

"It's nighttime. That's what it's for." McCoy gathered the boy close, warming beyond anything beer or bourbon could cause as Pavel curled in to him, laying his head on Leonard's chest and settling as if he was designed to fit right there.

He lay there stroking his hand gently through disheveled curls, and thought for a long time about transporter theories he didn't understand, and how less than two months ago he didn't know half the things he did now.

"Len."

His hand slowed, then took up his soothing stroke again when Pavel didn't move. "Hmm?"

Pavel was quiet for another long moment. "I fought with Hikaru tonight."

McCoy couldn't help a smile, remembering Pavel dumping water in Sulu's food and dragging him out of the mess. "Sorry about that. He's...you know he's just--"

"Worried. Yes." Pavel didn't sound exactly forgiving. "Whatever he told you about...about me, or about..."

McCoy's smile faded. "Irina?"

He could feel the tension as it strummed through Pavel's body. "Whatever he told you wasn't for him to tell."

"He really didn't...just her name, Pasha."

"That is too much!" Pavel drew in a breath, fingers curling over McCoy's shirt. "And I told him so. I told him a lot and I don't think he'll listen, but..." He sighed. "He told me something too. About me, about how the things I hide from people are the things I most need to tell."

McCoy answered flatly. "You're allowed secrets, even from me."

"Secrets are more powerful the less people that know them." Pavel's tension didn't fade. He slipped in as if he could get even closer than he was. "I don't want it to be powerful anymore. You've heard me talk too much today already, I know, but..."

McCoy frowned into the darkness. His arm slipped around Pavel's sleep-warmed body, curling across his side. "It's not like I get tired of it, Pasha."

"Good." Pavel seemed to be smiling for that one word, but the smile was out of his voice almost instantly. "Then I will tell you a ridiculous story that is very embarrassing, and then you will make me feel better because you always do, and then we will sleep."

McCoy looked down through the darkness at tangled curling hair. "You don't--"

"Len. It's very important that you don't talk. At all. Because I will never finish, and this way I can pretend to just be talking to myself and not feel so..."

He chuckled, but it ached in his chest. "Okay."

"Okay. Starting now. No talking."

McCoy smiled but obeyed, keeping his mouth shut.

There was a few seconds pause, and a quiet sigh. "I was completely ridiculous at the academy, do you know that? You can assume, at least. I was small and strange and Russian, I didn't drink at parties or watch football or date girls or any of the things that everyone else talked about constantly. I learned, that was all."

McCoy could picture it way too easily. A fourteen-year-old Pavel with huge eyes and round cheeks and all those curls everywhere, watching life go on around him because he didn't know how to contribute. He just knew how to learn.

It hit him with this sudden jagged stab of shock - McCoy himself was on the campus at the same damned time. The Enterprise crew was half made up of recent grads, which meant half the fucking crew had been at school with Pavel.

"Anyway, one day – I was fifteen – someone walked up to me in the courtyard outside the administration building. This girl, I'd never seen her before, or hadn't noticed her if I did. She walked right up and kissed me on the mouth."

The smile was back in his voice. "It was a dare from her friends. She told me so, right afterwards, while she was laughing at my expression. She lost a bet and had to kiss the strange little kid sitting by himself."

McCoy petted his hair slowly, trying not to tense. Knowing that something grim had to be coming made it hard for him to enjoy the levity in Pavel's story so far.

"As soon as I heard her speak, I forgot about the kiss entirely. She was _Russian_, her accent almost as bad as mine. So instead of being embarrassed I asked her where she was from. We talked, for hours. About home, and how different America was, and Americans. We were friends from then on. She would call my room and ask me to just say something- anything – in Russian."

McCoy wasn't sure why he hated this girl so damned much already. Maybe Sulu's grimness when he first brought her up, or Pavel's reaction when the name was spoken out loud earlier.

"She was bright, and she had friends everywhere, boys all around her. She was beautiful," Pavel added, "but I was the last to notice something like that. Remembering her now, though, she was. She was as tall as any of the boys who followed her around, and pale as a ghost, and blonde."

He fell silent for a little while, as if picturing the girl he used to know.

McCoy looked out at the darkness, wishing he could see Pavel's face. Pavel couldn't hide much of anything, and he usually didn't even try.

Then again, maybe that was the reason Pasha wanted to talk about this now, in the dark.

"She used to ask me why I knew no one else." He curled his hand over McCoy's chest, fingertips smoothing over the fabric of his bedclothes. "Irina said I was terrified of doing something I didn't already know I was good at, that's why I never tried to make friends. She talked to me about girls, and about boys. She offered to set me up with friends, and tried to convince me to join clubs or go off campus and meet people..." He sighed, his voice wry. "People my own age."

He looked up suddenly, head lifting off McCoy's chest. The darkness made it hard to see details, but the glitter of his eyes was clear as he looked at McCoy.

"You should know, I wasn't unhappy. She said it was unnatural, a boy like me being so uninterested in people. She said I was scared, and maybe I was, but..." He hesitated, looking for words. "I never had _friends_, not until I came to this ship, but I get along with myself enough that I never felt the lack. Does that make sense?"

McCoy hesitated, but nodded. He didn't like it much, but it did make sense. It was probably a good thing Pavel was so content in his own head, or he wouldn't be half as well-adjusted as he was.

Pavel sighed. He lay back against McCoy, but his body didn't relax. "She was my first, I suppose. My first friend. But on my sixteenth birthday she came to my room with a bottle of vodka. Real Russian vodka, sent from home. We toasted a dozen things, and she kept pouring more and more. And then she kissed me again."

McCoy's hand stilled in his hair. He looked out at the darkness, feeling his expression hardening.

Pavel didn't look at him again. His voice was getting softer in that quiet, confessional way of his. He wasn't scared of telling the truth, even an embarrassing truth, but he didn't like it.

"She kissed me and drank more vodka, and I didn't know what..." He shrugged. "It wasn't like when the others had touched me – the man at university, or the boy I tutored at the academy. It wasn't the same. I was drunk, a little, when she took her shirt off and put my hand on her. Her breast. You know." Pavel shifted, voice going even softer. "She told me to take my shirt off, too, so I did..." His voice stuck for a moment.

McCoy swallowed, but he kept himself quiet and still.

Pavel inhaled, deep and ragged. "She started to cry. As soon as she saw..." He gestured awkwardly at himself, his own chest. "She kissed me through her tears until she couldn't stop crying. I didn't understand any of it."

He laughed, small and bitter. "She got drunk because she thought it would help. She told me this after she finally gave up and put her shirt back on. She wanted to give me sex. As a present, because I was lonely, she thought, and I would never manage it on my own." He inhaled raggedly, his face dipping into McCoy's shirt until his words were muffled. "She pitied me my age and my fear of people, and she drank herself stupid so that she could give herself to me."

He kept his face buried against McCoy's chest, hiding from the story. "But in the end she couldn't even do that. She took one look at me, my body, and she called herself sick because I was a child. She begged me to let her leave."

McCoy didn't wince, because he didn't want Pavel to feel any kind of reaction he might misinterpret. He stayed quiet and stayed still, and it was maybe the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

"I never asked for any of it. I wasn't normal, but I was _happy_ with my books and lessons. I never felt like...like the freakish little child everyone saw me as. Not until that night, when she wept at the idea of forcing herself to touch me, but pitied me so much she still tried."

It was some crack about pedophilia that made Sulu look at McCoy so furiously. It was that stupid joke that made Sulu tell him to ask about Irina.

Pavel recounted the unwanted touches of three different, strange men without shedding a tear. But this girl, this friend who couldn't bring herself to touch him, seemed to have hurt him worse than anything Bauer could have done.

Sulu was a smart guy, and a good friend. He was right about a lot of things.

Maybe everything.

"Pavel." McCoy blinked burning eyes at the darkness around them and stroked the thin fabric of Pavel's bedshirt. "Pasha..."

Pavel didn't move. His face stayed buried in McCoy's shirt and his fingers gripped his pajamas tightly.

He didn't sob, though. He didn't even cling for that long. He spoke into McCoy's chest. "If it weren't for Hikaru, I might never have told you about her."

McCoy frowned, trying to look down at him.

Pavel stayed stubbornly close, though. "It is embarrassing. But. Len. Lyonya..." He drew in a deep breath and pulled his head back, lifting up and looking through the darkness. He still clung tight to McCoy's shirt.

"Embarrassing is _all_ it is." Most of his features were lost to the darkness but his wet eyes were steady on McCoy. "If Irina haunted my memory, you have already driven her away. You didn't even know about her, but you replaced her with new memories. You showed me how good it should have been." He smiled suddenly, shy. "When I all but trapped you in my quarters the first night...when I took my shirt off, and you looked at me like I was beautiful. Even when you saw...me, as I am. You called me beautiful. You made me feel it."

_You _are _beautiful_, McCoy wanted to say. To drive home to Pavel, because it was all the more important in the light of that story that Pavel really believe it. Irina might have stopped herself because he was too young, but that kind of humiliation didn't discriminate. All Pavel knew was that a friend he cared for couldn't force herself to touch him.

All McCoy knew was that Pavel had never asked her to. He'd never asked anything from any damned body.

McCoy met his eyes; his tears had stopped but the tracks were drying on his cheeks, gleaming dully, and McCoy had to remember to never ask what Irina's last name was. Because he would find her if he knew how, and he would break his Hippocratic Oath.

Pavel relaxed after a moment. Maybe he saw something in McCoy's face that echoed the words McCoy couldn't have ever said clearly, or well, and so didn't say at all.

He curled back in to McCoy and sighed. "And now...now there are no more unpleasant stories for me to hide. You have them all, you've taken them from me."

McCoy blinked heated eyes and stared out at the darkness, wondering how the fuck he was ever going to be worthy of that kind of trust.

Pavel, almost in answer, leaned up suddenly. His mouth, damp with tears, brushed over McCoy's cheek, and he whispered into the darkness, "_Spasiba, iscelitel'."_

* * *

When the door chimed he rolled his eyes and thought impolite thoughts about always having to be on call.

But he answered, or at least growled from across the room with his ass staying firmly in the chair he was sprawled in. "Damn it, but come in."

The door – and if computers could think he sometimes wondered what the sensors in his room would've thought about the grouchy bitch living there – recognized it as a command and opened obediently.

He was completely blatant about his displeasure, barely flickering his eyes up from him book. "It's my day off," he said in greeting to whoever was damaged enough to pester him in his off hours.

"Yeah, well. I don't want to be here either, doc." Sulu came in, hands in his pockets and looking the very picture of a sullen kid sent to the principal's office.

McCoy covered his surprise with a tight smile. "Punching hours are over for the day, flyboy."

Sulu actually turned a little pink. "I come in peace. Or at least in non-violence."

McCoy sighed and set the book down, marking his spot carefully. "He's not here, if you're looking to talk some sense into him again."

"Yeah. Nyota told me earlier that he was stealing Spock from her for the evening. Something about bison theory, or boson, or what the hell ever." He flashed a faint smile. "He's somewhere being smart at people."

McCoy returned the smile just as faintly, wondering what the hell Sulu was after. He stood up, stretching lazily. "I'm due a warm-up," he said, grabbing the cold dregs of a cup of coffee. "Want some?"

"Sure."

He glanced back as he thumbed the replimat for a refill and a second cup of coffee. "Black?"

"Sugar. Double cream." Sulu moved to his couch and sat down, looking instantly comfortable in his surroundings the way he always seemed to.

Funny, he'd never seen Sulu lose his constant Zen cool until he decided to come in and slug McCoy. Lucky him.

Sulu looked at the table, at the book McCoy had deserted. "What're you reading?"

"_The Brothers Karamazov_," he answered with a wry smile.

"Ouch."

"Yeah. At least I got a pass on _War and Peace. _Apparently even Pasha can't keep all those characters straight, so he knew I'd be hopeless." McCoy grinned to himself, but tried to school the expression as he went over and stretched out the second cup of coffee.

Sulu took his coffee and sat back. He frowned, looking from McCoy to the cup and dropping all pretense of casual small talk.

McCoy dropped into his chair with a sigh.. He almost told Sulu not to bother, that he'd lie to Pavel and tell him they were square. But hell, Sulu had sought him out, and that must've been tough.

He stayed quiet.

Sulu regarded McCoy over his cup, his fingers tapping the rim slowly. "I just don't know, doc. I really don't."

McCoy nodded. "If it's any consolation I'd react the same damned way if our roles were reversed. Hell, I'd make you look like a saint in comparison."

"It isn't that I don't trust you," Sulu said in return, his eyes solemn. "I'd put my life in your hands any day, doc. I'd put _his_ life in your hands and not worry. But this?"

"Don't sweat it, kid. I understand – have from the start. I bet I've called myself worse names than you ever could." McCoy frowned, sitting back and tilting his head up to frown at the ceiling. "You know, there's really not a god damned thing I can say to you. I've given it some thought, too, lately. Trying to make things easier for Pavel."

"Yeah."

"I can stick with him, and I will, and that'll wear you down eventually. I can keep him from being miserable as best I can, maybe even make him happy. But there's not a quick fix." He regarded his cup, thinking that over. "Hell, I don't even want to fix it all that bad, because if you ask me it does Pavel some good. He needs to see that people care about him enough not to take the passive, easy road when they're worried about him."

Sulu was quiet. McCoy lifted his head to look over and saw that the kid was smiling. Small and controlled, like everything else he did, but it was a real smile. "I don't know, doc. Maybe there's no instant fix, but maybe it won't take as long as either of us thinks."

"Yeah?" McCoy hesitated, looking at him closely. "If you don't mind me asking, what's making you think that? What brought you here at all?"

Sulu took a long swallow of coffee and sighed, sitting up and setting the cup on the table. "When Pavel dragged me out of the mess yesterday? He let me have it. I mean, big time."

He stood up suddenly, a little of his calm belied by the apparent need to pace around while he talked this out. "I deserved it, too. Irina...I shouldn't have said anything to you about her. That was out of line. I think you should know, I think you'll understand why I did it, but that doesn't make it right."

McCoy considered telling him about the night before. About Pavel's soft story and his shivers of humiliation. The damp warmth of tears on McCoy's bedshirt.

But he stayed quiet, figuring he'd let Sulu get his words out first.

Sulu paced lightly, moving on the balls of his feet with the natural stride of an athlete. "When he was done yelling, he said a few things that made me think. He said that it's bullshit – his word, doc, and thanks for progressing his education like that."

McCoy chuckled.

Sulu flashed him a grin. "He said it's bullshit that I spend half my time reassuring him that he isn't some child, that he's not some mascot to the ship, or to Nyota and I, and then I turn around and say 'oh, except in this one way. You're totally a kid this one way and you can't be trusted to make your own decision'."

McCoy considered that.

Sulu's grin went wry. "He told me that if he was ever going to learn to be his own man than he couldn't let people, even his friends, even me, pick the ways we thought he was still a kid. He's got to be one or the other, kid or man, equal or mascot. Not half and half, especially if he's not even the one picking which half is which."

Smart kid. Fucking smart, fucking _old _kid. McCoy almost wondered if Pavel told those things to Sulu hoping Sulu would tell them to McCoy. Because fuck if he wasn't guilty of the same crime.

Sulu moved back to the couch, flopping into a boneless slump that only a guy who hadn't hit thirty yet could manage. "So, fine. If he's a man then he can be with whoever he wants. And if I think the guy he's with might not be good for him..."

McCoy tensed.

Sulu sighed. "Well, he can make his own decisions, which means he can make his own mistakes. I can't go around slugging people or throwing temper tantrums - that makes me the child, doesn't it?"

"I wouldn't have said it to your face," McCoy answered, looking away from Sulu in the interest of keeping the peace.

Silence fell.

Sulu broke it soon enough. "You know that's your cue to tell me how you are good for him."

McCoy snorted, but didn't answer.

"Come on, you gave me the talk once. You're a doctor and a good man and all that other crap, remember?"

McCoy grimaced and looked to the side, at the book he was slogging his way through.

"Real bad time to go silent, doc." Sulu's voice was getting tense.

"I'm not a shrink," McCoy said finally. And the moment those words were out he kept going – Sulu wasn't Jim, he wouldn't mock his uncertainty. McCoy sure as hell couldn't talk to Pavel about this, and hell, maybe he wanted someone to agree with him, with his fears.

Those first words were just drips – the faucet opened hard.

"I'm not a shrink, and I never bothered with psychology. I never took classes for this shit. Yeah, I'm a doctor, but Pavel's not hurt anywhere I can fix." He faced Sulu, oddly eager to get this out to someone. "I might be hurting him worse. Every fucking thing I say to him, everything we do, it might be dead wrong. I might be pushing him too far, no matter what he says. He could fucking well break on me, Sulu, and it'd be my own fucking fault for being so selfish."

God, it felt good. It was a form of release, getting these ugly dishwater thoughts out of his head.

"He never wanted anyone before, he says, and now he wants me – me, of all fucking people. So I do the most shallow, idiot thing in the world andsay yes. Because I miss touch, and because he's _beautiful _and I can't get over the things...what he says sometimes, and how his mind works, and how he's so determined to be a man that he takes responsibility for everything that happens to him, especially the shit. Even Bauer's dick in his mouth...he gave me this whole theory once, this whole rap about causality, and he blamed himself as much as Bauer. Who does that, Sulu?"

He paused, but no answer came. Frowning, he glanced at the table, the Russian book he was reading to reward Pavel, because Pavel had agreed with him that Tom Sawyer wasn't as good as Huck Finn.

He thought of a different book. Yevtushenko. Fury and Envy.

"You know, he gets so pissed off that he was screwed out of a normal life. He's even more pissed than I am that he got hurt so young, that those bastards fucked up sex and love and kissing and touching for him. He wants to fix that, and he wants _me _to fix it with him. He trusts me to...and there's no way to live up to that."

He slumped back, dropping his face into his hand and rubbing at frustration that never went away.

"I had a beautiful wife and a perfect little daughter and I couldn't make that work. I couldn't get something that simple right, how the fuck am I going to do _this_?"

Dark humor bubbled up, and his chuckle sounded dry and raspy. "Fuck of it is, I have no choice now. He wants me, and that kid is damned well going to get everything he wants. I can't walk away, and I don't want to, but...it's like I'm going into surgery with the wrong god damned equipment: I have to do it, and I have to do my absolute best, but the odds I'll get it right are _shit_."

"Doc."

McCoy turned back to Sulu, for a moment wanting nothing more than agreement, a dark glower and reassurance that Sulu would keep trying to talk sense into Pavel.

But.

Sulu was smiling.

Bright, that smile, fucking incongruously bright and sincere.

Sulu stood smoothly, taking his cup of coffee and moving in graceful strides back to the replimat. When he turned to McCoy again the smile was still there.

"Okay."

He glared at Sulu. Okay?

"You win."

McCoy frowned, stirring from his own heaviness. "What?"

"You win. I trust you with his life, and I guess I trust you with this, too. Which figures, really. All this drama just to get one more I-told-you-so from Pavel."

"Come on." McCoy sat up, leaning forward. "How the hell...you heard all that shit, right? I wasn't talking to myself. I'm not a fucking psychologist, Sulu. I don't know what--"

"Okay, but. He's not your patient."

McCoy's words dried up.

Sulu grinned. "It'd be some pretty extreme therapy if he was, don't you think? And no offense, but if I ever thought you were doing this as some kind of treatment, I would never have kept my mouth shut for a second."

McCoy opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Look, you're an awesome doctor, we all know this. But that's not all you are. It's sure not how he thinks of you." Sulu chuckled to himself. "I think 'lover' is the word he used, but to be honest I blocked the exact words out of my mind. And will continue to block it out every time I hear him say anything like that."

McCoy just sat there, his breath uneven, his thoughts way too sluggish.

"This time, doc, you're going to have to be content just being the cure."

"I'm not..." McCoy stopped. He frowned.

Sulu laughed suddenly. "Man, Pavel was right. Who are we to call him a kid when we can't even figure our own selves out?" He headed for the door, apparently content his job was done. "See you, doc."

McCoy muttered something that might've been an answer. His gaze went distant, his mind grinding slowly into gear.

He sat there for a long time, coffee getting cold again as Sulu's words repeated in his head, over and over. Words he should have known, should have figured out for himself.

_He's not your patient._

Jesus mother fucking _Christ._

Sometimes he feared for the health of this crew, because obviously Leonard McCoy was the dumbest piece of shit who ever lived.


	12. Chapter 12

"Doctor?"

McCoy pushed past Spock, invading his too-warm quarters and looking around. "Hey there, smiley. Where's your girlfriend?"

"Smi...my...?" Spock cleared his throat. "If you're speaking of Nyota, she is--"

"I'm not talking about Jim. Where's that famed Vulcan mind of yours, man? Answer the question!"

Spock gave him the tiniest arch of an eyebrow that was the equivalent of angry bristling from anyone else. "Perhaps you'd like to take a moment to calm down and get a hold of yourself, doctor."

"I'm not here as a doctor, you pointy-eared killjoy." McCoy wasn't sure, he hadn't peeked at any mirrors lately, but the grin he couldn't seem to wipe off his face had to be fairly ridiculous looking.

Spock regarded him, the eyebrow arch shifting from irritation to curiosity and over to amusement, all in the movement of a few millimeters.

McCoy really liked Spock a hell of a lot more once he'd learned how to read those eyebrows.

"Very well, Leonard. If you can contain yourself, I'll--"

"Doctor McCoy?"

McCoy turned instantly. "Hey, speak of the devil."

"And she appears?" Uhura completed with an amused smile. She slipped from the doorway to the bedroom and moved in, practically floating in a thin, brightly colored robe. Her hair was down, her eyes kind.

Lucky Vulcan bastard. But McCoy couldn't stop grinning long enough to feel jealous. "I need a favor."

She tilted her head, curious. "Name it."

He named it.

She'd be a hell of a classy, dignified woman some day, but she was still young enough now to squeal and throw herself across the room at him, seizing him in a hug that nearly knocked him over.

* * *

He caught Jim on his way into the mess that evening, and didn't even bother calling him to get his attention. He marched right through the door, grabbed him by the shoulder, and hauled him around.

Jim whirled fast, enough bar fights in his past to prepare him for the worst whenever he got grabbed. But he relaxed and grinned when he saw who it was. "Hey! Great, I wanted to talk to you about--"

McCoy grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him in, and planted a kiss right on that big, gabby mouth of his. Nice and firm and solid.

Jim's words cut off a second too late, his voice becoming muffled sound against McCoy.

McCoy pulled back and took in Jim's gaping and blessedly silent mouth with a satisfied nod.

He sidestepped Jim, looking around and spotting curly brown hair. Pavel was watching McCoy – as was the entire mess hall after that kiss – with wide eyes.

McCoy reached the table, grabbed Pavel's glass of water, and dumped it all over his tray of half-eaten dinner. "You done? Good, let's go."

He didn't give Pavel a chance to answer, just grabbed his arm and hauled him up. "Later, kids."

Nyota and Hikaru both grinned back at him.

Jim was still standing there, a growing smile on his shell-shocked face, as McCoy led Pavel past him and out the door.

"Lucky bastard," he heard Jim mutter as they left, and he didn't know which one of them Jim was talking about, but. Yeah.

* * *

Pavel was patient enough, and amused enough, to stay silent through the lift ride up to deck five. He cast frequent looks over, but there couldn't have been much on McCoy's stupid grinning face that worried him.

Once the lift doors opened Pavel moved with McCoy, smiling curiously but content to walk beside him without question.

"So." The door to McCoy's room slid open and shut behind them, and McCoy thumbed the lock and faced Pavel. "When the hell is your birthday, anyway?"

Pavel blinked at that. "Next week. But--"

"Good." McCoy grinned, holding out his hand. "Don't take this the wrong way, kid, but it's going to be a hell of a lot easier thinking about this whole thing when I can say 'eighteen' in my head instead of 'seventeen'."

Pavel sighed, but he reached out and slipped his fingers through McCoy's – ever since that first moment when their hands had touched and he had gotten such a sweet, peaceful look on his face, he hadn't ever resisted the chance for holding hands.

"You didn't march me all the way here to tell me that, did you?"

"Nope." McCoy grinned, bringing their hands up, stroking his thumb down the back of Pavel's hand slowly. He didn't explain at once, taking a few moments to let things still around him. He'd felt this buzz around him since Sulu left his room earlier, and it was only now starting to fade back.

Pavel studied him, patient.

"I just thought you should get used to spending more time here," McCoy said finally.

"You could have called me to come up. You didn't have to destroy a perfectly good meal." But as he spoke Pavel's eyes caught the glow that he got so often these days, the awed spark that flared up in response to something McCoy would say or do.

"Look." He met Pavel's bright eyed gaze and cleared his throat, his smile diminishing a little. "I've got something to say, and it's going to sound really fucking dumb but you're not going to laugh at me, because you're a sweet kid and I've got a more delicate ego than people realize. Plus this little speech right here is meant to make you feel guilty."

"Alright." Pavel's fingers twined, lazy and comfortable, with McCoy's. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"You're not my patient."

Pavel didn't laugh.

McCoy went on, clumsy with his words at the best of times, but hell - if Pavel wanted eloquence he wouldn't have been there in the first place. "All this stuff I've been thinking, all the guilt and the hesitation and the overprotective crap you've called me on...I figured it was because you were so young, or because of what happened to you. Because I felt guilty."

Pavel definitely wasn't smiling then. The instant protest rose in his eyes, but he pressed his lips together and stayed silent.

McCoy relaxed a little. "But as young as you are, that wasn't ever the problem. And I knew before now that I wasn't with you in some misguided attempt to cure you of your problems, I just didn't go one step further. I didn't realize that the desire to cure you was still there, and it's exactly what I've been fighting against. If I fucked up with you, not only was I fucking up a relationship – which I'm good at, trust me – but I was fucking with the health of a patient. Which is unforgivable."

Pavel's eyes didn't clear. He didn't speak, but the awe was out of his eyes as he looked away.

"It took me a while to realize I was feeling all that. But now that I know it, I know it's bullshit." McCoy spoke firmly, since the next words were important: "You're not my patient, Pasha. I don't have to cure you, because there's nothing wrong with you."

Instantly the shadows growing behind Pavel's eyes cleared. Like the sun blasting through clouds, his eyes when he looked at McCoy.

McCoy smiled at him, holding their joined hands to his chest like the idiot romantic southern gentleman he thought he'd stopped being after the divorce. "You've been through some shit, yeah. A few sick little fuckers thinking with their dicks tried to victimize you. Some drunk girl with too much ego pitied you. But that doesn't make you a victim, and it doesn't make you pitiful."

He took in Pavel – the tangle of curls, the bright-eyed gaze, the long, pale fingers caught in McCoy's grip. "You're better than them, you know that? You're a fighter. You fought those bastards off every time, you fought me when I was being a stubborn idiot. You fight every person who tries to treat you like less than you are. I thought I wanted to fight that war for you, like I'd fight any other hurt I came across."

The grin he'd been flashing for hours now was gone, and it felt strange that he couldn't bring it back. He was happy. He was fucking happy, and it was like this unfamiliar weight pressing out from inside his chest. But no grin.

He just smiled, and it was so sincere he would've gotten self-conscious if he'd taken time to think about it.

"You know what I want, now that my head's on straight? Not to fight all this shit off for you, but to be here watching while you fight it yourself. To lend a hand if you ever want some help. Because it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen, watching you fight."

"Stop."

McCoy had more to say – paragraphs and poems more, really – but the one quiet word made his words jumble up in his head, like traincars slamming into each other after a sudden stop.

The expression on Pavel's face was...hard to read, really, but McCoy didn't for a moment get the feeling that he'd said anything wrong.

Pavel blinked after a moment, and looked down. He brought a hand up suddenly, rubbing at his face. His eyes. "If you keep talking about how strong I am, I'm going to cry. And that wouldn't do much to prove your point."

McCoy chuckled, but it stirred the deep, sharp overprotective urge in him to protect. He couldn't fight Pavel's battles for him, no, but that didn't mean he had to let him hurt alone. Not as a doctor, but as a lover.

He reached out, fingertips catching Pavel's chin and urging his face up. "Every fighter needs a safe corner to retreat to now and then. I'll be thatfor you in a heartbeat, if you'll have me."

"If I'll...if I..." Pavel shook his head, giving up after a moment's groping for words. He closed the short distance between them, grasping McCoy in a sudden, fierce hug and holding on tight. "_Gospodi, bozhe moj..._Len_. _Lyonya..."

McCoy shut his eyes, wrapping his arms around Pavel just as tightly. Sentimental old fool, but Pavel gave him a cue and he would damn well use it. "_Ya tebya lyublyu_, Pasha."

Pavel froze. His arms went slack around McCoy, his grip suddenly weak.

McCoy didn't let him go. He kept his eyes shut tight and curled his cheek into tangled curls. "If that means something dirty, blame Nyota."

"Nyota taught you..." Pavel sounded distant, faint.

McCoy nodded. "I asked her to. I was going to save it, to wait until later. Planned to whisper it in your ear right before I made you come, so you'd be able to remember those words instead of some of the dark things you probably keep remembering. But maybe this is better, since sex makes some people say those words when they don't mean them. This way there's no room for doubt."

"Perhaps you could say it then as well." Pavel's fingers dug into his back, his grip still weak like he was stunned from some blow. "_Ya tebya lyublyu._"

McCoy smiled into his hair. "Pronunciation lesson? I figured I'd do it wrong, no matter how many times I made her repeat it."

"Not a lesson, Len. A reply."

McCoy's smile faded.

It was fucking bizarre, really. Some element of human physiology – or maybe human psychology, therefore out of McCoy's range of expertise – that caused a person an inability to smile when they had a moment of complete fucking happiness.

The thought that might've come to him a week ago – that Pavel was too damned young to understand love the way McCoy did – never stirred. He never for a second thought that this kid who knew himself so damned well didn't know this one thing.

He breathed in and his grip tightened. He brought his hand up, stroking through ragged curls gently. "Pasha."

"It must be fate, I think," Pavel said in answer. He curled into McCoy's chest for another hug, without the desperate edge. "That someone should see me as more than a child, and...and love me. And it should be the one person whose touch has made me feel like more of myself instead of less."

McCoy smiled at that, finally regaining the ability. "Spock says there's no such thing as fate. He hasn't taught you that particular lesson yet?"

Pavel laughed softly. "He indulges me a few human idiosyncrasies. He's very polite that way." He drew in a deep breath and pulled back again, regarding McCoy with a bright-eyed, shadowless gaze. "You will let me touch you now," he instructed firmly. "You won't stop me anymore."

"No." McCoy grinned, a little watery. "And you'll never know how hard it was to turn down that kind of offer."

"You are a stronger man than you realize," Pavel answered easily. He looked more speculative suddenly. "You are a better man than you realize. You're the best man I have ever known, Len."

McCoy's smile went crooked and he laughed. "You're proba--"

"And I will fight you on this as I fought you on everything else. I will fight you until you believe it." Pavel smiled, looking pleased with the idea. "I will learn enough, in time, to help you fight your own battles as you helped me. I won't be happy until the shadow of that...that idiot woman is cleared away from you, the way you cleared Irina and the others from me."

McCoy drew in a breath, his grin fading.

Pavel met his eye, as open a book as usual. "I am a fighter, and you have helped me win my fights. But you are mine now, because you love me, and that means we fight yours next."

He laughed, but it wasn't much more than a weak snort. "In my experience that's not how this thing works."

Pavel raised his eyebrows. "In all your experiences with the many young Russian geniuses who have adored you?"

McCoy's throat worked, but his smile returned. "Sorry, I forgot I was breaking new ground here."

Pavel pulled him in, kissing him easily. "I'll have to keep reminding you of that, then."

"Yeah. You do that."

He thought about telling Pavel not to worry. That Jocelyn was history and he was over it. But it would've been a dumb thing to lie about, as smart as Pavel was.

Her shadow was still there, yeah. Not as dark as it had been, and McCoy was just starting to learn that the darkness that followed him like a cloud was actually that shadow, and not something that came from inside of him.

He was a good man, sometimes. He was flawed and jaded and a little bitter now and then, a little gruff. But he had done his best for the kid in front of him, and his best had been exactly good enough.

So he was a good man with Pavel, for Pavel. And that was a start, maybe. A little bit of sun starting to burn through the clouds casting shadows over him.

Funny. He was a better man for being part of this thing he had thought was so selfish and bad. He was a worse man when he lost himself in his wife-and-child, home-and-dog past, the life that was supposed to be so natural and right and clean.

He didn't know if there was a term for that – irony, maybe, in some way. Or fate, as Pavel said. Or love, or _lyublu, _or Envy, or Fury. There had to be some word for it.

He'd ask Pavel sometime, maybe. Pavel knew every damned thing in the world. Or hell, maybe he'd just let it go. Maybe this whole thing, how easy it was and how right it felt, maybe it would just have to go into that huge category of things he didn't understand.

He didn't understand Pavel, after all this time. He didn't understand Spock, or quantum physics, or a hundred weird races on a hundred different planets. He didn't have to understand them, because he'd always been content to accept them on their own terms.

Looked like happiness was just one more thing to add to that list.

* * *

End


End file.
